Discover the Secrets of Mindful Wellbeing | with Hope Pedraza

Michael: Hey, what's up Unbroken Nation! Hope that you're doing well. Welcome back to another episode with my guest and friend, Hope Pedraza. Hope my friend, what is happening? How are you today?

Hope: I'm good, Michael, thanks so much for having me on.

Michael: Yeah, of course. It's an honor, I've been looking forward to this conversation since we connected recently. I know that we're going to dive into a lot of different topics, especially around our wellness and this concept and idea about human design that many people may not be familiar with. And we're also gonna talk about your story and your journey, which I'm really excited about ‘cause you have a hell of a story, my friend. But before we do that tell me, what is a moment of your childhood that I would need to know to understand who you are today?

Hope: That is, that's a great question. And I don't know I feel like there's moments that, not necessarily my childhood, but just like little moments along the way, I don't know how to narrow it down to just once, and that's probably gonna be my answer for all the things like narrowing things down in just one, there's so many, quote, defining moments that I felt have been like these just pivotal, situations that happen? I think a big one for me as a kid, and this wasn't like a specific moment, but it was a period of time and it was me just dealing with my own like body image issues. And I think it, maybe it was the moment I recognized that I was like, that I had been dealing with body image issues and like disordering behavior and then it was maybe just the recognition of okay. This is how I've been living for this many years, and not to say like it changed right then, or I did anything about it, but I think it was the realization that I was mentally and spiritually not connected with myself and dealing with these just, honestly at the time I was just hating myself. But yeah, I think it was a, the realization that I was living that way.

Michael: It's so interesting how often we get into that place, into our physical body where you use that language like hating yourself that's such a heavy thought. How old were you when you were in that space?

Hope: I mean, it started, oh my gosh, it started super, I was a dancer growing up and so I think, from the time I realized what my body was, I don't know, sometime in elementary school and I was a short kid, I've always been short and like more of an athletic build than like the, you see the long, tall, skinny dancers. And that was what I wanted to be, was the tall, skinny dancer, like I wasn't gonna change my genetics, but at the time I'm like maybe I'll just not eat, maybe that'll help. I think, when the realization was probably in middle school in, I remember my one of my friends was at my house and told my mom that I was like giving my lunch away basically, and that was I was busted and my mom had conversations with me and I mean it, of course it didn't change then ‘cause it went on free year after that, through high school, through college, through, after college. But I think it was that moment where my mom was, aware of the situation too. And now my friends were like, tattling on me. I'm like crap, what am I gonna do about it now? But it was, it was years, it was, over a decade of my life feeling that way, and honestly at the time, I don't think I would've ever, I thought hate, ‘cause you're right, hate is a strong word and I don't think at the time I would've ever used that strong of language. But looking back now, that's exactly what it was, I wanted to look like anybody but myself. So yeah, I would say I was hating myself, hitting my body, what I looked like, all that.

Michael: Yeah, I resonate with that a lot actually, I think one of the things that I experienced was just as a kid, like not having access to proper nutrition, not really understanding the food we are putting, and so until I turned 16 and got this growth spurt and became 6’4”, like effectively overnight, which is a really crazy thing.

Hope: That's crazy.

Michael: Yeah I grew like over a foot in a summer. It was insane, it was just the worst growing pains you could ever imagine.

Hope: Oh, I can imagine. Geez.

Michael: But it stretched me out ‘cause I always was the chubby kid, and I remember watching like MTV was huge, when I was coming up to age myself a little bit. And you'd watch total requests live and you'd watch all these really fit people. And I have the same thing where it's I hate this body that I'm in, even though I'm 11.

Hope: Right, exactly.

Michael: And you look at it and you go, that, that's so confounding because this is a place of, or should be at least a place of joy, of excitement, of like discovery and finding who you are, but I think the pain that we go through in that time, like it sets us up for massive failure. And you talked about the impact that it had, middle school, high school, and beyond. What has your journey been in reconciling that experience of self? To transform from using language I hated myself, right?

Hope: Yeah, yeah. I think the big piece for me, and I don't know, I feel like this is gonna sound really like fluffy and I don't know, but I feel like meeting so I got divorced when I was in my early twenties and that was like an epic low for me because I was still battling with this disordered eating behaviors and now it's getting divorced and my husband at the time had cheated, it was like a whole thing. And it wasn't until I met my husband now me a couple years after that, and there's something, how we clicked, I somehow helped me to peel back some layers to reassess or kind of relearn like about me, meet myself and like figure out who I really was. And, all of these things are uncovered, realizing I didn't really know who I was at the time when I was married before and I was just trying to live this I grew up in the south, so it's you go to school, you get married, you have kids. I was just like, I was following the order of things, you were supposed to do things, and I thought I was doing everything right, but it was like to check these boxes off and then realizing I've lost myself somewhere along the way, years before that. So my point is, I wasn't until after I'd gotten divorced and I now my husband, my current husband now. That somehow I think allowing him to see me, for me, allowed me to see me for me, and I think it was me. Understanding who I really was without like any labels, right? The wife, the whatever, like living this like perfect, it's me, like this total perfectionist growing up and I wanted, I was perfectionist in my marriage and had to have the perfect life, keep up appearances, other southern thing, you learn the south, you gotta keep up appearances and make sure every look, everything looks okay from the outside and, but who knows what's going on under the surface, right? And just, keep it all in, push it down, and that, I lived that way for so long and so I think that relationship, this relationship has been the biggest area of growth, allowed me for the biggest areas of growth and just I, again, kind of meeting myself for the first time and understanding like, what do you like what I really believe, like what just about life, about myself, about life, about without people telling me how I should believe and what I should believe. And so yeah, I think it's being able to make my own opinions about things and coming into myself, it was the biggest piece of that. And it's a slow process ‘cause I still struggled in my twenties with, some of those behaviors and even with my first kid, like being pregnant for the first time was horrible for, honestly I hated it both times, being pregnant is not fun. But the first time I was pregnant, I like really struggled with the body image thing and it was like, dude, you're growing a fricking human chill out. That was the recovery from that was also a big growth moment for me and like having this empowering, experience of growing a human and having a human, I think also helped, but it's just been this journey along the way, and I do think that meeting my husband and getting to know him cause we were such good friends for so long, he's allowed me to be me. I think that was the first time I've been around people who love me, who've allowed me to be me, I felt free enough to just be me.

Michael: One of the things I was thinking as you were saying that is how often discovery, whether we like it or not, comes in relation to other people. And I think part of what can be crippling is relationships, which like really sucks because you're like, oh wait, I thought this person was supposed to be my person and my thing totally. But also it opens you up if you're willing to be vulnerable and to hopefully, if you have someone who's willing to hold the space to get into the mud with you, to get into the dirt, like you can find out who you are, and you said something really interesting that, this is the first time you really felt the ability to fill that safety, and I think that a lot of people, they struggle with that because, When we grow up we expect our friends to hold that space, and like you mentioned, you had a friend who told your family that you were giving away your food, which as a kid feels like a freaking betrayal, you're like, how could you ever do that? And then as an adult, you're like, and I don't have kids, but I'd be like, I'm really glad this person would help me then.

Hope: Exactly, this is a good friend, yeah.

Michael: And A as you were starting to navigate, ‘cause I know that it's unbelievably common how many people struggle with eating disorders and it's not necessarily just bulimia or anorexia, it's also overeating and I was super guilty of that. That's a weird way to phrase it, but it is something I participated in my own life that's, you don't get to 350 pounds by accident, I assure you of that. And recently I had posted a couple months ago on social this before and after photo of me where it was like, here I am, 350 pounds, 25 years old, I'm at my absolute lowest, it's the darkest place I'm at. And here on the other side, I'm fit, I'm in shape, I'm healthy, I'm living into this life that I have now. And I talked about how that obese version of me did not love myself, didn't care about myself, was a codependent, yes person who was a freaking doormat, and I had somebody, I had multiple people actually comment and be like, you're body shaming. And I remember being like, you can't I can body shame myself if I want to, it's my freaking body. But what happened was the, I realized like most people are so disconnected from their physical being that they don't recognize that they're hurting themselves through the way that they are not taking care of themselves. And a big part of this is like looking at probably so much of this stored up trauma that's inside of us. When you started this, and look, and I'll say this with context too, cause I believe it's really important. I don't believe if you're hurting your body, that you are healthy, whether that's in a good way or a bad way.

Hope: A hundred percent.

Michael: ‘Cause people are like, I'm gonna go to the gym 75 times a week, I'm like, that's as bad as like laying on the ground and like starving, like all of the things. So when, what was the shift for you, as you started this journey, and obviously you have, your husband now, but like, he didn't do the work for you, he didn't show up, he didn't have to go into the depths of who it is that you are. How did that process begin for you? What did that look like? Because I know that there are people listening right now who would love to hear this story.

Hope: Yeah, yeah, you're right. It's, yeah, you have people that are the catalyst for change, right? But they're not doing the work, so no, I agree with that. And I agree with you too because I was doing, just to reiterate what you were saying, I was doing that, I was the obsessive exerciser and I was doing all the things and I'm like, oh no, I'm healthy, I'm working out, five hours a day and it, but, so it's, yeah, you can go one way or the other on that spectrum. But for me, I think, so my husband and I met at CrossFit, that's where we met, we met at a CrossFit gym and I think I went with a girlfriend of mine and I think when I started doing cross, and this isn't like to promote CrossFit, cause I don't even do CrossFit anymore, but this is just how it happened for me. I was, when I was going, when I was doing these workouts, and I've worked out my whole life, I've worked out my whole life, I started going to, to the gym with my mom in the nineties, like I've always worked out, but it was when I was doing these workouts that it had started to feel like empowered. I was like, oh, I feel like a badass, right? Like doing the throwing weights overhead, I'm doing all these, and so I think for me, the initial spark was like, okay, I can tell the difference between being strong, and not being strong, like thinking I'm healthy, but then actually being pretty weak. And so for me, initially it was like, okay, I'm feeling pretty strong, and so that for me, that was the start of it where I was like, okay, if I fuel myself a little bit more, I feel stronger and I feel better when I'm doing these workouts. And this sounds like I'm giving you a blanket, like cliche answer, but this really was how it happened for me. And that was initially the spark was, it's okay, I eat fuel in my body a little bit more, and so now I feel better doing these workouts, and I started putting the two together. Not like I didn't know what nutrition was doing for my body, but I was like experiencing it and feeling this kind of strong, empowered sense of self. And so, it started with that. And then I think when I met my husband, even though yes, he wasn't the one that did the work, but I think something about that relationship, he was like the total opposite of my ex, and so I think that piece for me was like, okay, I'm attracted to this person, and he wasn't meeting all these like check boxes, I felt like I had to check off when I was married the first time, ‘cause when you're growing up in the Bible belt, you check all these boxes and if they don't check these boxes then you know you're not supposed to get married to them. And he is like the total opposite. And for me, that sparked something in me too, where it's okay. I feel like there's something to this, like I feel like I was following the right path or whatever and marrying this person before, and it didn't work out so clearly, I wasn't following my own path, like I had to been following somebody else's path, I was doing things that the way other people were saying I was supposed to do it rather than the way I was supposed to be doing it. So I think that was the other kind of shift that I had in my own head where it's okay, I'm attracted to this person, I'm so connected to this person and it's not what my, how I grew up, the society of where I grew up would, would approve. And so I think that was the other piece is realizing that I am responsible for my path and that I'm responsible for me and that I'm responsible for what I create my own life. Nobody else is responsible for it but me, and I think I had given away so much my power to different people and organizations and groups and family member, whatever, growing up that I'd never felt that sense of like internal power, that source of power from within to realize I'm responsible for my life and I can create my life the way I want it to look.

Michael: That is like the secret, right? And I think that's the thing that people don't understand. How did you get to that moment though? I want to go a little bit deeper into this because this is where, I think about so much of the journey of life being within those very nuanced moments, right? There's something that we're faced with in which now we have to make a decision that is different than all of the decisions that we've made leading up to this moment and one of the things that I made a huge mistake on, especially young, was being incredibly stubborn, which is both my superpower and my probably my an anti power. And so as I look at the cornerstone for me and having effectively a rock bottom, it was like, okay, there must be something different here I am going to literally drag myself through glass to get to whatever the other side of what I think is this possibility. When you started getting to that place for yourself, I know that's a place where I think that's actually the spot where struggle actually begins, to be honest with you, because you're shifting an identity. How did that look for you? What was that process like? What was it for you as you really started to come to this place of recognizing actually, maybe I can have this other life?

Hope: I think it started, I had a friend at the time when I was going through my divorce, and I was devastated, naturally, I was devastated and she made this comment and I can't remember verbatim exactly what she said, but it was to the extent of I understand that there's, grief that happens in this process, but she said you, the fact that you're tied up in this the grief of this situation is evidence that you have completely tied your identity to this person, like you need to figure out who you are outside of this role that you were playing and this person, and at the time I thought it was so harsh. I was like, ouch, that was, it just felt so harsh. But that has always stuck with me, that conversation that we had, and I think that was the first time that I, okay, now I'm like being offered this new chapter in life. Let me see it as an opportunity.

Michael: (17:41) Hold on, let me hang one second, you went blank there for a moment. Go back, you said, okay, you talked to your friend and this was the first time. Yes. Yeah

Hope: (17:52) So that conversation I had with her was the first time that I had that I really thought about, okay, this is this new chapter in life where I can figure out who I wanna be. I'm starting with a blank slate and I can decide who I wanna be, what I want my life to look like, who I am as a person, and I think it was that was the impetus of that journey of just figuring out who I am. And I think, I don't know, for, in some ways, I think it gave me she gave me permission, like I needed permission, but I think just that because it hit me so hard where I was kinda like that was harsh, but understanding exactly what she was saying, where it's ‘cause I saw my marriage ending as a failure, like I just, that's my initial thing is I'm this perfectionist and I'm, I don't fail and I don't do things wrong and I, have to be this perfect Christian girl or whatever, and so I saw it as a failure, and so I think hearing her say that was like, okay, no, this is actually an opportunity and now what are you gonna do with the opportunity? And so I took that as my chance to, yeah, peel back the layers of who I thought I was or who I had been conditioned to be and figure out who I really was, and I think too, that was also when, I going back to your original question on starting to love myself again and shift that whole thing, I think I had realized that in this, marriage and in this relationship and just in this, I don't know, chapter of life how much of myself got lost, I just lost so much of myself, and it was just reconnecting back to that piece and redefining what it looked like for me to quote unquote take care of myself, and not to say that this had, this was a long process, this was like I want it, I don't wanna make it sound like this was like, oh, all of a sudden, the next year I was like, totally fine. This was a long journey and journey's never over, I'm still on the journey, but I think this was just the beginning of it, and I gave myself permission to like, love myself again and to be me, I think it sounds, again, sounds a little cliche, but I don't think I ever knew what it meant to be me, like who I really was on the inside. And I was, I think I was always afraid to have my own opinions about things or be too opinionated or speak out about things or go against the grain, and so all of this was like, I'm giving myself permission now to just be me and it's true, get screen and it all started with realizing what it meant to love myself and take care of myself. And that was accepting the person I was looking at in the mirror as this is me and the damage that not to condemn myself or hate myself for it, but just understanding like the damage I was doing to my mental and emotional and spiritual health by going for so long, just wrecking my body, my physical body, because it all started with, it's the physical, mental, emotional body, it's all of it, but just going for so long, doing that.

Michael: How did you start to mend the relationship with yourself? Because, I think that, one of the things that I struggled with the most was getting to that place of being able to be like, I love me, and that's the place that I know people struggle the most, because you said it, you hit it, or I was a perfectionist, I can't let these things fail, I have to be great, you're, you probably have accomplished a ton of things in the world seeking admiration and love from people, and filling up all of the cups except your own, right? And as for myself, being a consummate achiever, being type A, being very much driven by doing, creating, building, reaching all these goals, I remember having these moments of sitting in what most people would consider massive accomplishments in feeling entirely empty, and being like, who cares, right? And then realizing like a huge part of this is really can you give yourself accolades? Can you be the one to pat yourself on the back? And one of the things I teach my clients constantly are if you don't cheer for yourself, nobody's going to, and so what did the beginning of that process of stepping into self-love look like, because I love that you pointed to, it's been a process. It wasn't overnight, it's still a process but what were the beginnings of that for you?

Hope: I think first it was, recognizing, I think first it was the physical piece for me and recognizing like how much damage I had done to my physical body. And I think that was probably the initial piece. I'm a function.

Michael: When you say, for clarity, when you say damage, what do you mean?

Hope: Like physical damage, physical damage from the years of disorder, eating behaviors and compulsive exercise and not eating enough and all of that. Like, my immune system was totally shot, my gut had IBS, my gut was shot, my adrenals were like in the toilet, like the physical pieces of me was probably the first realization because again, I thought in my head I'm like, I'm healthy, I'm working out all the time, and I eat healthy food. But I was totally running myself into the ground and I knew that, I knew that it wasn't, I think we all know when we're doing that to ourselves, but I think for me to see the physical evidence, I had run some labs on myself ‘cause I'm an functional nutritionist and so I'd run some labs on myself as part of my training and I'm like, oh crap, this is really bad. So I think the first thing it was, that was a wake up call, and this was, some years after I'd started this initial journey of let me, learn who I am again and all that, seeing it on paper, the physical parts, okay, like I've done some physical damage that I've gotta heal. And then starting that healing process, the physical healing process the physical body starting that was like, okay, I'll change this in my diet and I'll take this supplement, I'm doing the physical pieces, but realizing like you were saying where, you have all these accomplishments, but you're so empty, I felt the same thing when I was doing the physical healing, where I'm like, okay, I'm doing all these physical things and I've cut back on the high intensity workouts or whatever, I'm not running marathons anymore, I'm doing all these things, but I still didn't feel like healed and I still didn't feel, I still feel like there was pieces missing. So for me it was diving into, like inner child work and diving into that realm and uncovering the like mental emotional pieces that were under those layers. So it was something like this, like three step process for me because the physical part for me was easy, ‘cause it's oh, I'm used to taking care of my physical body, I'll just change how I'm doing it but it wasn't fixing the things. So I think understanding that, the physical parts, everything. And I am a firm believer of this, everything that's happening on the physical level and the physical body has its roots in the energetic emotional body and conventional ways of healing, they're not teaching that. And so it wasn't anything that I ever looked at. And so I think that was the other big piece is I come across this girl and I, she was like a spiritual business coach and so I started doing some work with her and there was like a big section in her little prem about in child. And I had never done any of that before, and that for me too has opened a whole other can of worms like crap. There's so much going on down there that needs to come out and this okay, this, and then I start, I feel like I started to chip away at the iceberg there. Okay, this is, I feel like I'm getting somewhere because there's these things bubbling underneath the surface, underneath the physical part that I've haven't touched, like I don't know how to get there, and so I think it was, that was the next step.

Michael: Yeah the inner child work is such a big part of this, my second book is called Eight Steps to Healing Your Inner Child. There it's actually arbitrary, it could have been 37 steps, right? It doesn't matter. But what I realized early on in this journey is that there is a linear impact to all of our experiences, whether we want to admit it or not, and there's a twofold thought process that I have about this, one is you do have to honor a lot of those needs of who it is that you are in that childlike free state, ‘cause that's play, that's excitement, that's joy. A lot of it's love unbridled, right? But then the juxtaposition of it is like you are not a fucking child anymore, right? And so now you're in this really weird place where you have to be able to navigate, how do I play and enjoy life, but how do I also be disciplined and accountable and responsible? Was there anything specific that as you started doing that inner child work became the pendulum swing for you? Was there a moment, was there an experience, was there a memory? Was there an event? What started in that work to shift you to where you are now?

Hope: Yeah. I think it's twofold, I think part of it is understanding how much my upbringing and let me, I just wanna preface this, like this is not me bashing any, anybody or anything or any organizations or anything, because I still have, I'm still from my beliefs, but this is just my experience. I think part of it was, or a big piece of it was understanding how much conditioning I had based on my upbringing. Upbringing, and a very conservative part of the country in the Bible Belt, and how much that affected my view of myself. And my accomplishments and all of that, I think it was a lot of, I had so much like shame and guilt under the surface about a lot of things, like I realized when I was doing this was, years after I'd gotten divorced and realized there was still so much guilt and shame around my divorce that I had never truly fully healed, like it was still under there, and it just went back to my conservative upbringing because in my view, and especially when I got divorced and I was still, I was super young, it was my early twenties, divorced, like the worst thing, it was oh, you're the ultimate center, like your marriage is a failure, you're not supposed to get divorced. And that was still living in me, that guilt and shame around that. So I think the guilt and the shame piece was huge, and I think when I mentioned before and witnessing the women in my life growing up, my mom and my mom be the first one to tell you. She'll admit this too, the women just in a community it's keeping up the facade, right? It's keeping up appearances, it's let's make everything look good and look like you got it all together and all of that, and I still felt that too, and again, it was all these things that had happened because at the time, so when I when I was going through this inner child work, all of this, I feel like all this was foreign to me, like I didn't know all of this stuff was living in me, that I had this guilt and shame about things and my, and understanding like my perfectionist tendencies, it all goes back to that, like seeing how this was modeled and you've gotta look perfect and be the perfect wife and all this. So yeah, I think it was deconditioning a lot of the things that I learned growing up and just how I was raised and this kind of conservative mindset of how things should look and how you should live your life and all these living by the shoulds and what makes you a good person and what makes you a bad person, untangling all of that.

Michael: Was there a part of that in which you had to forgive yourself?

Hope: Oh yeah totally, I think the forgiveness piece a, for going so long, honestly, it had to been close to 20 years that I was like maybe not 20 years, maybe 15 years that I had been just beating up myself with the, my disordered eating behavior. So forgiving myself for that because the other thing I would think about, like all these things were coming up, all these opportunities that I saw as wasted, like these trips where I was so worried about what we were eating and how I could not eat this and how I could get away with not eating this. I wasted so much of my life growing up and in high school and college, so worried about what I was eating, what I was not eating, and just feeling like I put so much energy into that, that I wasted so much energy in that I missed opportunities to really be present and really enjoy these moments of my life that should have been, just more enjoyable as a kid and as a teenager and in college, and so I think there was like some grief around that part too of I felt that of these feelings coming up, like I feel like I missed out on things, but then reframing that and looking at. The opportunities that came up from those experiences and now working the work that I do as a functional nutritionist, I've worked with people who have, are or have been recovering from disordered eating behavior. So like I'm able to use that as a gift now, but it was definitely a healing process of forgiving myself for that and not and letting go of feeling like a quote wasted, time or energy, whatever, and knowing that time is and it's never wasted, it's just, how you see the opportunities on the other side of that.

Michael: Yeah. It's what are you gonna do with those moments?

Hope: Totally.

Michael: I was actually having a conversation with a great friend today and we were talking about time and realizing, it is very easy to get caught up in the past, when the reality is it's over, like it's gone. There's literally nothing you can do about it. It is, also looking at the future and recognizing that you don't actually have control. What you have is right now, what you have is this moment, and if you are willing to sit aside both judgments and shame and guilt, but also expectations. You get to this place in which you are in the now, and that's ultimately where life lives because we get so caught up in wanting to beat ourselves up because it's like, yeah, I did that thing for 15 years or for me it was always about smoking, I was like, fuck, I smoked for fucking 12 years, what are you doing? And you look at it, you go, it's over, right? Why are you still beating yourself up? Why are you still destroying yourself over something? And it's like a, at some point you have to, it's, I don't think it's forgiveness alone, because people will forgive themselves and be like, oh, I let I'm going to allow myself to, to recognize I've paid the pens for whatever this thing is that I've done. But then they forget about the whole thing, about just let it go, let it go. Like how long are you going to carry this weight with you? Like, how long are you going to carry the turmoil, the pain? How long are you gonna carry the suffering? Most of it at your own hands, right? Because at some point you're going to have to come to the recognition that like a big part of all of the decisions that have led you down this path are on you, and some of them were great decisions and some weren't so great. But it's in the lessons and in the learning that when you acknowledge those, you're able to step forward. And one of the things that I think is really interesting is in this concept about food, and this is one of the big reasons I wanted to bring you on, is we look at our lives through our place like multiple times a day, and there are decisions to be made about what it is that you should do in terms of the food you put in your body. What you consume, how you consume it, when you consume it, and there I would argue that probably people feel more guilt and shame about food than even probably money or relationships or anything. How do you start to reconcile that relationship, like from a food perspective, like just literally when you're sitting down and it's in front of you?

Hope: You mean the shame around what we're beating like in a moment?

Michael: Yeah, exactly.

Hope: Yeah, that's a tough one because I had this conversation with the client not too long ago because, we tie, we all have emotions and all, we all eat emotionally, like we all do, we all eat emotionally, and she was grappling with that and she, we're going through the protocol and she's oh, I'm going to visit my parents and my family. And we, that's the way we connect is through food, that's how we connect. And that's true for a lot of people that we have emotional ties to food, we have emotional ties to things that we eat, that we've shared with family and stuff, and I think, for me there's a surrender piece of that too, because I don't necessarily, and this goes against a lot, you know what a lot of people are teaching, but I don't necessarily think it's always a bad thing to have an emotional attachment to food. Now, yeah there's a line, but I think it's how we respond to that. So for my client and that for the example we took her, she's eating in this specific way, she's eating this, according to your protocol. And so I think, for me was having the conversation with, okay, how else? Is that the only way you can connect to your families through food? Is that the only way? Like maybe here's another thing, maybe we should evaluate the relationships with other people around us, that's the only way we're connecting with people and family, whatever is through food, then maybe we should reevaluate those relationships. Are those relationships worthwhile? If that's the only way that we connect, can connect with people and so I think that goes back to your original question that wasn't really answering your question about the food in the moment, what's happening with the food? I think, the textbook answer is oh, let's think about how food is nourishing us and figuring out how it's fueling us. But we're not always thinking about that in the moment, I think the presence piece plays a big piece for me, and I think I talk with my clients a lot about mindful eating, which again is a like, fluffy way to say it, but I do think that a lot of times we're eating and then there's the guilt and the shame around it, like evaluating. What you're feeling in the moment, and I have my clients do this, like I have my clients when they're like starting out with me and they do a little food journal, it's not so much so I can see what they, them yummy, I guess that's important, but it's for this reason, it's like, how did you feel before you eat? How did you feel after what emotions are coming up? But it's to allow them to connect, like their feelings and emotions, their physical body with the food that they're eating because it affects all of that, and I think that's the other piece that people don't understand and maybe this, answers your question is understanding how our emotions and our mental state when we're eating affects the food that we're eating and how the food is metabolized in the body and putting all of that together. The mental, emotional, physical part around eating food and how that's all connected and how, like my clients, for example, like when they first start out with their food journals the first day, it's very basic, like I felt full, or I felt whatever, and then by the end of it, like by day four or five, it's like this paragraph long of oh my gosh. I realized that I was super mad at my kids when I ate this meal, and then after the meal, I felt this, and my head was hurting later, and that they're tying all these pieces together because they felt this specific way when they were eating, and that's how the food affected their body. So it's, for me it's tying in the mental, emotional, mental piece with the food.

Michael: Yeah, that makes sense, and being cognizant of it, right? Yeah, not hiding from it, not running from it, one of the things I used to do, I would eat to the point where I would be on the ground in physical pain, like literally feeling like I'm going to explode. And I'm a child doing I'm literally like 13, 14 years old, and it was, part of it was survival because if I could get my hands on food, I would just, eat because a lot of it was being a homeless kid and never knowing where your next meal comes from, right? That becomes an autonomic response, your body is like consume consume, and then what I had to realize, and I think this was probably one of the greatest understandings that I had just about my own experience was to evaluate myself, and this again comes to that terminology I use about now no longer being a child, was that I was able to evaluate and look at my environment, the one that I had created and put myself in and recognizing I'm safe, there's food in the pantry, there's food in the refrigerator, I can afford to buy groceries, I don't have significant debt, like I am fine. And I think that's the thing that started to transform for me, and you're right, are we gonna emotionally eat? Yeah, of course we are, it's a birthday party or it's a Christmas or than Thanksgiving, or you had a real shit day and you're like, I want gummy bears or whatever it is. And it's I think the thing about it is the reset. And instead of it becoming tomorrow and the next day in a week and a year five years later, right? It's okay, cool, I have the experience. I was able to manage the emotion, did I have a moment? Yep, ‘cause I'm fucking human and I'm letting go of it and then get back on the bus.

Hope: That's it. And I think that's the problem too, I think that there's, this because the emotional piece is huge, and I think there's a piece where we either shame ourselves for feeling whatever the thing is we need to feel, or we just stuff it down, stifle it, and then it just it rubs like a volcano, five days later ‘cause we haven't felt it. And so I think, lean into the emotion, feeling the feeling and, okay, so you had a breakup and you wanna spend the night, on your couch eating Ben and Jerry's. Okay, so do that and then let's reassess tomorrow and see if we can pick ourselves up and live a little bit more actively the next day. I think it's giving yourself permission to feel the thing and be in the moment and feel the emotion and like saying, just kinda reset, but I think we're. People get so tied up and my clients do this, a lot of clients that I talk with do this where it's like a black or white thing. And so if they mess up this one day, then screw the rest of the week, the whole rest of the week is just, they're just gonna bomb it, it's crap, I'm terrible, like it's this shame and guilt thing comes in, it's don't feel and it's about feeling the emotion that you need to feel in the moment, whatever. If it's frustration, you were angry, it's somebody who had a bad conversation, but let's let go of the guilt and the shame, this is what I needed in the moment, this is what my body told me I needed in the moment. I needed to go get like your, the gummy bears, this is a great example. But then let's let go of the guilt and the shame because my, I needed to feel this in the moment and then I was able to move on because I, I felt that without guilt shaming myself about it, and then I can move on.

Michael: Yeah. And I think the hardest part in that is not beating yourself up when you do it, because so many people will do it. And I'm a loser, I suck, I don't have control. I'm, I'm never gonna be successful, and then now you're in this fucking loop where it's okay, dude, hold on a second. And it's can you give yourself permission just to be a human? Can you give yourself permission to be like, yeah, this is what I need right now, because sometimes you need it. But also sometimes you don't, and that's the thing where it comes into can you be responsible for yourself? Because, it's one of the things that I see people get beat up all the time on social about is this conversation, pick yourself back up and it's feel the feelings, but don't, be a slave to your emotions. Because you're not, your emotions whether, even though you would love to be, ‘cause it feels good to suffer. If you're used to pain, if you're used to hurt, if you're used to people shitting all on you all the time, you're like, oh my God, this feels just like everything I know, and then you're like, but wait, what is the point of that? How does that help you? How does that benefit you? How does that move you forward and towards your goals and towards the alignment of the person that you want to be? And it's have the moment, have the day and even really can you shorten it? Can it be instead of seven days, it's seven minutes? And learning how to love yourself in those moments because, yes, it's hard. And I'm not saying it's not, and I'm not even saying I don't have my own shit still, where it's I have these moments where I'm like, okay, dude, just get up, just like there's one of my favorite scenes in any movie is in Kill Bill, and it's the first film, I don't know if you've seen it or not, but I basically Beatrice, who's the Beatrix, the bride, who is the protagonist of the film. She's, it just escaped this hospital where she's been in a coma, she hasn't been able to move her body, she's laying in the back of this truck and she has to figure out a way to get out, like it's literally life, life or death, and she's laying in the truck and she's looking at her paralyzed leg and she starts talking to herself and she's telling her big toe, she's wiggle your big toe, and sometimes that's all it's take the first fucking step, just do the one thing you know you need to do today because that will start the avalanche. It's, that's because it really is truly a snowfall, it is, like once that first thing starts to go forward the rest starts to play a role, and here's what I want to just reiterate again. It's like this isn't overnight, you've been doing this for a long time, I'm curious, is there an intersection? Do you find commonality in the people who are able to navigate this effectively or even to have the most, success is a hard word, but throughout the most success in this journey?

Hope: Yeah, yeah. And I think it goes back to, it goes, it goes about what you were just saying and because you were saying, we wanna shorten the time, right? You feel a thing and then we wanna shorten the time, then, we get back to life. And that's the whole premise behind nervous system regulation. And I know with my clients that I work with, we do a lot around nervous system regulation. And it's, that's the piece for me and regulating your nervous system. And there's a lot of trendy ways you can do that, there's a lot of ways that we talk about that you can do that. But it's, I'm annoyed that it's so trendy right now because I feel like it diminishes the importance of it. I don't know, but the nervous system piece is huge because that's the whole point of nervous system regulation. Like we're building resiliency in the nervous system so we can regulate ourselves more. So it's not about getting dysregulated, it's about how quick can we make the dysregulation, right? How exactly quick can we get back to, homeostasis? And so it's building resiliency, and so to your point, so I'm in conversation with a client the other day and her nervous system is a complete wreck, like we literally spent her entire, she was crying about her entire, about throughout her entire call, she's taking care of her dad who has to dementia all these things, and so that was, you were saying like, find the one thing, and that was the gist of our conversation together, it's let's find the one thing we can do. She has, she does not have the men's capacity for male, doesn't have the men's capacity to go for a walk, okay. What's the one thing, breath work in the morning, perfect, five minutes, let's start there, and then, like you said, it's this avalanche, right? Because now, okay, we're gonna build some strength and resiliency in the nervous system. We're sitting still for a little while, we're practicing the breath, our nervous system's okay, I can get on board with this, and then your body starts to crave more, and it's like you're saying, it's the snowball effect. So for me, it's the people who have the most, quote unquote success with this. It's the people who take the time to work on their nervous system. It's the nervous system regulation piece and building that resiliency in the nervous system. And I think the other piece of that the part two of that is the awareness and the present, and that's something that's been my like goal the past few years is like building in more, especially having kids, like building more presence into my life and into my day ‘cause I am so guilty of doing the things, running a thousand miles a minute all day long, never stopping, you don't have, time to think and you're just going and then you're just this ball of blah, at the end of the day, and it's I haven't even had time like to be with my own thoughts, much less take time to be with my kids or my husband, or whatever. And so the presence piece, I think is big too. And being present with yourself, being present with, your feelings, your emotions, your thoughts, all of that, I think those, the people that I find have the most success, they're taking the time for that presence and whatever that looks like, if it's meditation or journaling, what, whatever the practice is that helps you build presence, whatever, the practice doesn't matter. It's just the act of being present and then it's building resiliency in the nervous system and really honing in on that piece because that's sort thing too is and I learned this with my own self again, realizing that like doing all these things for my physical body wasn't really healing all the things right.

I felt like pieces were missing is physiologically impossible, for your physical body to totally heal, if your nervous system is a wreck, like if you're in fight or flight, your body literally, physiologically, it cannot heal itself, like it's impossible, and so if we're trying to like do all these things to heal the physical body, but we're not regulating our nervous system, of course you're not gonna be successful, like you're gonna keep running that loop and you're gonna keep constantly going through that cycle of doing the thing and getting mad at yourself, and it is just, it's gonna just perpetuate.

Michael: Yeah. And it will continue, and so, I love what you said, it's like very much about that awareness and about that presence. And I think arguably presence is probably the hardest thing that we tap into, especially right now, societally. There's so many distractions, so much happening. We're busier than we've ever been, and probably the history of the world and I think busy is not active, busy is not productive, busy is not powerful, busy is bullshit. And so I think about actually be a great t-shirt actually. And so I think about this often and it's like there's so many things that people try to do to understand themselves deeper, and I think that the deeper you can understand yourself, whether it be through coaching or mentorship therapy any of the bazillion personality quizzes that one can do, but the deeper that you can go into understanding yourself. The more clarity that you have, the easier it is to navigate your wellness, and I know one of the big things that you talk about is human design, and I've had experience with this more frequently over the years, but I'd love for you to talk about a little bit more in depth about what it is and how it can actually help our wellness and our wellbeing.

Hope: Yeah, so this was one of those moments for me when I first opened into my human design, one of those like pivotal moments you were asking about of like when things shifted, and so human design, just in basic terms, this is combination of some ancient teachings about the shocker system and the ‘ology of life and astrology, and it puts it together with some more modern day sciences, like quantum physics and quantum mechanics, and it puts it together into this graph and it's your energetic, blueprint, it's the energetic blueprint of your soul and who you were designed to be and live out on this planet. So for me, when I first drove into this was that spiritual coach that I worked with that I mentioned earlier. She had this little piece of it in her program, and it was just enough for me to be like, holy cow, I need to know more, like I need to dive deeper into this, because it was, it was like I was learning about myself for the first time, but then I was also like, meeting a friend that I knew existed, like I knew these parts of me existed, and it was like this open, this whole new world of, I'd already started this journey where it's learning who I am and who I wanna be, but this was like, okay, now this is I feel like this is giving me permission, like it's validating everything I already knew about myself and it's giving me permission. So no, this is, why am I apologizing for this part of me? This is how it's designed, I like to integrate this into what I do with my clients, working, with people on a physical level, working with them on this kind of energetic, spiritual level as well, because, When you don't understand yourself at an energetic level, how do you really know how to take care of yourself? Like how do you really know how to nurture and build that wellness within yourself if you don't really understand how your body is designed, like how your body is wired, and so that's how I use with my clients because, the way I see it, when you look at wellness through the lens of human design, like we spend a lot of energy, a lot of excess energy living by the shoulds, right? And I am living by according to conditioning, whether that's through your family, society, whatever, and it's when we're living by these shoulds and this, there's so much evidence of this in my life that I was able to untangle, but this is when you start to meet resistance and when you're feeling that, like stuck, frustrated in your life, those feelings, it's okay, where, why am I feeling this resistance? It's because you're going against your design, how you were designed to live, design to be, and that's when the physical things start to show up on the body. So I am a firm believer that the, again, like I mentioned it before, but the physical pieces that are coming to the surface, all habits, roots, and these energetic pieces happening, what's happening on an energetic level and where we're going against how we're energetically designed. And with human design, I'm able to walk my clients through how they're designed so they can understand, how they best make decisions, how they best metabolize their emotions, how they best work, like in their job and at home, how their best address conversations within the relationships, how they best move and eat in the preferred environment. Like all these pieces that build into their wellness and really be able to curate the protocol for them, like again, it's like literally this is your blueprint I'm doing according to your energetic blueprint, and it's, there's so much more success and so much more compliance when it's okay, this feels good, this feels like me, this feels like how I'm supposed to be doing things, and it just feels better and they're, this is how we make it sustainable.

Michael: Yeah. And I've, one of the things I struggle with in human design is that I don't actually know what time I was born. And so we only ever get so close. And I know obviously with the folks you work with, you can help them and go a little bit deeper into this, but even with the information that I've been able to gather, it's really fascinating, the truth in it, and is it a little woowoo? Yeah, maybe, like I get that right, and I'm someone who has been willing to experiment over the years, you name a modality from reiki to dry needling and everything, and like I've tried just everything, ‘cause I'm like let's figure it out, let's see what we can find out about myself, great, and I think if people are willing to have an open mind, it helps tremendously in this journey. This has been an awesome conversation, Hope. Before I ask you my last question, tell everyone where they can find you, learn more and connect with you.

Hope: Yeah, I'm on Instagram. I'm @theHopePedraza, and then you can check out my website, hopefulandwholesome.com. And then I also have a podcast Hopeful And Wholesome.

Michael: Brilliant. And of course guys, if you go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com, we will put all of those links and more in the show notes. Hope my friend, my last question for you. What does that mean to you to be unbroken?

Hope: For me it means breaking through, it means, for me it's like you've heard of the ego death before, right? For me, that's what it is, it's the ego death, it's dying to your old self and accepting, who you are at a soul level and living according to your soul's path without resistance, without questioning, without doubting your intuition, and really leading with your intuition and living your life according to where your soul's leading you without the ego's voice in your head.

Michael: Yeah, and that I hear trust yourself. My friend, thank you so much for being here, Unbroken Nation, thank you for listening. Please subscribe, comment, share, and tell a friend, and remember, when you do, you move us one step forward to ending generational trauma, to helping people transform their trauma into triumph, breakdowns, into breakthroughs, and to be the hero of their own story.

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