Alanna Brennan: Whose Peace Are You Keeping?

Ross Tayler (00:00)

Hello, I'm Ross Tayler, your host and guide for Sacred Sundays, a space to slow down, tune in, and return to what's sacred within and around you. I'm also a life coach for empaths and sensitive souls, walking alongside those who are ready to come home to who they actually are. These conversations are part of fulfilling that purpose, a collective exploration of what it means to live in connection with the sacred. Some weeks you'll hear a sound-based offering to open the space. Other times we'll simply begin in conversation. However it unfolds, this is an invitation into presence, connection, and the beauty of the unseen. If these conversations find you, please subscribe, rate, and share so others can find their way here. Pour a cup of tea, settle in, and let's begin.

Ross Tayler (00:48)

Today on Sacred Sundays, our guest is Alanna Brennan. Alanna is a sound healer, voice coach and somatic guide. She teaches people to connect to their bodies through their voice, and to find their authentic power in the process. Alanna is the founder of Womb Reclamation, where she blends ancient wisdom with modern pain science to support those who are ready to journey inward, into their own bodies, to find the answers inside themselves. Welcome, Alanna. So good to have you.

Alanna Brennan (01:17)

Thank you, Ross. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

Ross Tayler (01:21)

Yes, I'm excited for our conversation as well. And I believe you're going to begin by guiding us through a short grounding exercise.

Alanna Brennan (01:29)

Yeah, I would love to just take a minute to drop into our bodies. As you said in the introduction, that is where all the answers lie. So we're just going to take a minute to drop into the body and the breath. Often in our daily lives, which are so busy and hectic, we start breathing from our chest and our shoulders, because we're stressed. So I'm going to invite the listeners to take a really deep belly breath. One thing I like to do to make sure I'm actually breathing from my belly is to put my thumbs on my belly button with my fingers pointing down, making an upside-down triangle. When I breathe, I want to feel the expansion in that area. That's how you know you're taking a really deep belly breath.

So let's all breathe in together, and breathe out as slowly as we can.

One more time, breathing in. Breathing out slowly.

And as you breathe out, you can imagine that you are melting butter, so that the muscles in your pelvis are softening and relaxing. Breathing in, and breathing out, melting that butter as the air leaves your belly.

Continue that pattern, breathing in. And on the out breath, notice the air coming all the way up through your stomach, through your chest, out your throat and out your mouth, connecting your two centres of creation, the sacral and the throat, our forces of life, our forces of creation.

Take another deep breath in, and on the out breath, I'm going to invite you to add a gentle hum. So, breathing in from the lower belly, and out gently.

[hums]

As you do that, you should feel the sound activating all the way from your sacrum, up your spine, and out your throat and your face. Let's try one more time.

[hums]

And to close, and to lock it in, we will do one final hum together.

[hums]

Ross Tayler (05:08)

Thank you, that was great. I had a fairly busy morning and day, and it was nice to have that pause. It's a great way to start our conversation.

Alanna Brennan (05:19)

It's a great way to ground. There are so many guided meditations and breathwork practices, but adding sound can be that extra layer. A teacher once told me: think of your grocery list. You've got all these things in your head. I've got to get apples, I've got to get eggs, I've got to get milk. Then start to hum and try to think of your grocery list. It gets more difficult, because the humming brings you back into the body and out of the mind. So for me it has been the most powerful way to drop into a meditative state, when my mind can be too busy for visualization meditations, or just the breath. It adds an extra layer.

Ross Tayler (06:07)

I facilitate laughter circles, and we actually do humming after the laughter to bring us back to centre as well.

Alanna Brennan (06:16)

And laughter is sound, right? Laughter is the sound of joy. So that's amazing. We're basically bringing the body into the state that we want to be in. If you're doing a laughter circle or a sound circle, it's the idea that we have conscious control. We think everything happens in the brain, but actually your body is talking to your brain and telling it what state you're in. So through breathwork, through laughter, through sound, through consciously taking control back, we can tell the brain, hey, I'm good. So I love that.

Ross Tayler (07:03)

Yeah, it's actually the opposite of what we would think. We think the mind is the main source of everything, but it's actually the body. It's bottom up, not top down.

Alanna Brennan (07:14)

Yeah. We have neurons in our gut that talk to our brain, and in our heart. We've been told that the brain is the epicentre, and it is hugely important, but it's the same as our planet. We can't say that one region dominates the whole ecosystem of the earth. Everything is working together. So it's bringing that ancient wisdom back in. It's all connected.

Ross Tayler (07:40)

What would you say about sound helping us connect back to our inner strength, our power, our creativity?

Alanna Brennan (07:47)

So on my journey, and through Womb Reclamation, what I teach is that we have two centres of creation as humans. There's our sacral, pelvic region, and whether you're born biologically male or female, that's how you procreate and bring life into the world. And then there's the throat centre, which creates sound. It's how we communicate ideas, which are our creations, into the world. When we're tiny embryos, the area that becomes the ovaries or testes and the area that becomes the vocal cords are actually one area, which then grows through a channel and develops into two different things. How can we tell? Well, what happens when you go through puberty? Your voice changes. What happens when a woman gives birth? She makes noise. What happens during sex? We make noise. A man came up to me at an event recently and told me that after he had his vasectomy, his voice changed. So they are so tied together. And when we talk about creative power, reclaiming the voice is also reclaiming our creative power in our sacral, and vice versa. One affects the other. They both run on the same system of fascia and the vagus nerve. If you go to a bodyworker, they'll often show you how the jaw mirrors the pelvis, and how stress in one can affect the other.

So that is what I teach, and what I'm really passionate about, and it's what has been helping me heal from a lot of trauma. For so many generations, it's been, children should be seen and not heard. We've been so repressed in our authentic voice. And we're finally getting to a time in humanity where it feels safe enough, where we have enough space, to start exploring who we really are, and not just what we're here to do, or how we're here to serve our family or our job or anything like that.

Ross Tayler (10:01)

All of what you said makes me think of so many things. One is that, as I think you know, I study Human Design, and the connection between the sacral and the throat is very present for many of the types in Human Design. It reminds me that, for many of us, we get the yes or no about sharing our creativity with the world from our sacral centre, and we speak it through our voice. I was doing a reading once, and the person commented, wow, I have a lot of unspoken noes in my sacral centre. Obviously, that's because of trauma, and saying yes to things that were actually noes. When I heard that, it wasn't surprising, but it was really sad. And that gets in the way of expressing our creativity as much as anything else. So what you were saying speaks to that, and it's huge, because we are creative beings. We're here to share not only our voice, but our creativity and our power, and all of those things are interconnected in what you said.

Alanna Brennan (11:07)

Yes, and the unspoken noes. Someone asked me recently, I've been told at work that I need to speak up more. How do I do that? My voice coaching is different from technical voice coaching, although I do add in technical pieces. Technical voice coaching is going to say, breathe here, do this. Your voice is an instrument, here's how to use it. But if your body doesn't feel safe to do that, if it doesn't feel safe to expand, if it doesn't feel safe to project, you can learn all the technical knowledge you want, and it's not going to work. This person grew up in a home where he was not allowed to express himself at all. So even though he was told to speak up, he just couldn't.

In my own experience with the unspoken noes, the body keeps the score. Eventually I had so many unspoken noes that my whole sacral region broke down. Extreme nerve pain, extreme muscle pain. I couldn't sit down. I couldn't drive a car. I was in extreme crisis. And the gift in that was that I finally had an excuse to say no. I finally had an excuse not to answer the phone and be the free therapist, not to go to the thing I didn't want to do. Through that experience of extreme pain and suffering, I started to say no. And once I started to say no, something really incredible happened: my voice changed. I always loved to sing. I grew up in a musical family. Now I can hear when someone has a frog in their throat, when their voice is beautiful but it doesn't come out. That was my voice. And all of a sudden, after I started saying no, I could do an Adele-style belt, not through technical training, but through setting boundaries. It's giving your body permission to take up space.

Ross Tayler (13:14)

And for so many of us, we're so focused on other people and taking care of their needs that our own needs always come second. Voice is a big part of that. Without our voice, we can't speak a boundary. We can't make it clear to someone. So if we don't have a voice, we're just putting up with all these things we don't want. And we know it, which is the hardest part. So I love that as you had that experience, your voice shifted and came back and became so powerful.

Alanna Brennan (13:45)

Yeah. And when we get into human biology, why is it that we put everyone else first, and why don't we speak up for ourselves? Humans have evolved very quickly over a short amount of time, but our wiring, our biology, is still pretty prehistoric and tribal. Not very long ago, you couldn't survive on your own in the wild as a human. We're not meant to live like that. We don't survive. So to be shamed, or to be cast out, was literally life-threatening. We're not living there anymore, but our biology hasn't caught up. So for me, and I know a lot of people listening will resonate with this, when I set a boundary, or even started thinking about having that conversation, my heart rate would get so high that I felt like I was going to die. I'm an extreme skier, and I have an easier time jumping off a slope into avalanche terrain than I did setting a boundary or speaking up to someone, because that biological wiring of, I have to belong to survive, is so strong.

Ross Tayler (14:59)

And that showed up for me early in my career. I was always getting into roles as a manager or supervisor, and I was terrified to correct and coach and give feedback, and let people know when they weren't doing something correctly, because I was so scared of what would come back. A big part of finding my voice was learning to navigate all of that. And as I'm sure you can appreciate, when you're not able to do those things, you're compensating for it in some way, and it catches up to you eventually, because you're not able to move that energy.

Alanna Brennan (15:38)

It will catch up to you in the form of disease or injury, or relationship issues, or problems at work. But it will catch up to you, because the body keeps the score, and the body keeps the truth. We can lie to ourselves, and we've been conditioned to, but the body keeps your truth. For me, I was in very deep denial about some abuse in my childhood, and I kept making up stories to get away from it. But when I sat with it being true, my body would relax. And eventually, after many catastrophes, basically, life got really hard. I kept getting the message that I had to speak my truth, but I didn't want to. I wanted to get away from it. And speaking it started to heal me.

One of the hardest things when we start to speak our truth is that just because you've healed and decided you're going to be authentic and speak your truth, it doesn't mean the people in your life are going to respond the way you want them to. Some of them might, and that will feel great, and a lot of them won't. But what you're doing is re-parenting your inner child. You're becoming the protector you needed growing up, and you're letting your nervous system know, I'm here for you, I'm going to set boundaries. But I feel like that's one of the hardest things on this journey. It doesn't mean that everything is magically going to be rainbows and everyone is going to hear you.

Ross Tayler (17:08)

The other thing that's interesting about what you said earlier is the idea that we're wired for connection, wired to be in community, and when we set a boundary, we might get cut off from that community. But the other thing I thought of as you said that is that we're living in a world that's asking us to be isolated and not live in community. I think of so many people living alone in apartment buildings. We're literally in each other's energy fields, and yet we don't have any interaction. It's fascinating to me. I've lived in apartment buildings where we didn't even say hi to each other, because we're just so focused on ourselves. What would you say about that?

Alanna Brennan (17:49)

It's a really weird world. It's a strange time. I grew up in a really tight-knit community in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and I'm really grateful for that. But there was also a lot of, you have to be a certain way to belong. So I feel like we're in this phase of upgrading our DNA and shifting our biology. Because you can go get your own food now, and your own shelter, it is physically safe to speak your truth and be authentically you, even if that means you might lose some people. And a lot of people are healing health conditions because of that.

For me, what's happened in the last couple of years is that as I've said no to certain relationships, or said, I'm not going to give my energy to places where I don't feel heard anymore, new doors are opening. I'm talking to people on podcasts. I'm giving workshops on voice. I'm invited to festivals and retreats. So we are more disconnected, but we also have more opportunities. You can connect with someone online, through Instagram. There's more disconnection, and there's more opportunity to find the right people, because you're not stuck in a tribe thousands of miles away from other people. So it's both, right? There's just so much contrast in the world right now, but I'm really trying to look at the positive. I'm seeing how I can create my own community and family, because I can, in a way you wouldn't have been able to in the past.

Ross Tayler (19:31)

I love that perspective, because it's true. We do have access. During recent years, we discovered that when we were able to connect virtually. I remember doing an offering during COVID, and someone from Europe joined in, and all of a sudden my community grew so vastly because of that one connection, and other people started showing up. It's limitless, really. Whereas, like you said, if you're living in a tribe, there are limits to what you're going to experience. So it's a great example.

Alanna Brennan (20:06)

Yeah. And that doesn't mean it's not hard. We spend a lot more time alone. And yeah, it does feel weird to walk by your neighbours and not say hi. I do online classes and courses, but I'm so passionate about connecting people in person and using our voices together, because it's so regulating for the nervous system, and humans are designed for that. We're just in a time now where, instead of being placed somewhere, here's where you're born, we have to figure it out. Some of us have autonomy and choice. That's totally dependent on your financial status and all that, I get it. But if you're feeling alone and isolated, which I absolutely have been, there are ways. I started creating a community for chronically injured and ill people, because I needed it. So we have tools at our disposal to connect, and it looks different than it did in the past. But we have to find the good, find the positive, and move forward.

Ross Tayler (21:08)

Tell me more about how sound plays into healing, how sound helps us regulate, and even the why of that. I know you mentioned it a little bit, but if you could go a bit deeper, that would be awesome.

Alanna Brennan (21:24)

Sure. I'm a recovering Catholic. I grew up Irish Catholic. But pretty much every ancient text, including the Bible, mentions sound. In the beginning was the Word. So everything is frequency. When we get down to quantum physics, nothing is solid. Everything is vibrating. Everything is frequency. So sound is who you are, and as we shift and change, we can move frequency. There are some amazing new technologies coming out with frequency machines for healing. And we can use sound to heal ourselves and each other. Music has forever been a healing tool, right? You don't even need to know the language of a song to resonate with it. It's that word, resonate. I resonate. This touches me. I might not know the words, but I feel it. That's basically how sound can work to heal. And if you look at vibration and frequency plates, I believe that if you hit the sacred tones of vibration, it can actually heal you on a cellular level, restore cellular balance and sacred geometry.

So what I've become passionate about teaching is how to use your own voice to regulate your nervous system. The voice is connected all through the throat and all the way down through your fascia and your vagus nerve. Using your voice, using that hum or toning like we just did, you'll feel it. You'll feel that instant drop-in and that grounding. There's lots of science to back it up, but what's most important is that you can feel it. So once we can tone and breathe from the lower belly, because that's where we get the most oxygen, and engage the diaphragm and really use the tools of breath and tone, we can come back into our own resonance, our own harmony.

You can think of it like this: everyone's got a thumbprint, and everyone's got a resonance. Sometimes you'll be in one resonance, and then all of a sudden you grow, you change, you flip to a new radio station. All of a sudden you're not resonating with the people you used to, or your job, or maybe even the same foods, because you've shifted frequency. I think we can all remember a time in our lives when we shifted, right?

Ross Tayler (23:49)

And so sound helps us to reorganize and reprogram and change our frequency, is what you're saying.

Alanna Brennan (23:59)

Yeah, to come back into harmony. It's vibration. It's all vibration. We're vibrating right now. We can't see it, but we are.

Ross Tayler (24:04)

Right. And that means we're also impacted by our environment, by who's around us. So as we change our frequency, we change who can be around us as well, because of that resonance.

Alanna Brennan (24:23)

We change who can be around us. We can change what foods feel good in our bodies. We can notice, or become more sensitive to, things that are not aligned with us. And there are electromagnetic frequency machines right now that are helping people heal from physical ailments, just by vibrating the cells back into their natural state.

Ross Tayler (24:44)

Yeah. I can't remember the name right now, but when I was in the Okanagan, there was a facility that had the screens in the corners. There was one in Nanaimo too, but I think it closed down. It's based on the work of Tesla and someone else I can't remember at the moment. We used to have our men's group in that frequency every week, and it was amazing. At first you could really feel kind of off centre, adjusting to it, but eventually it just became really great. And that energy was affecting the surrounding neighbours. It actually had quite a reach.

Alanna Brennan (25:19)

If you want to understand the universe, think in terms of frequency and vibration. I believe that's Tesla. And obviously he had some really powerful technology, and free energy technology, that got squashed, or he got discredited by the major players in the oil industry. But eventually that is going to come out. We are starting to vibrate at a higher level on planet Earth, and there are forces trying to keep us down, but eventually it's coming. I don't know if it's coming in our lifetime, but it is coming.

Ross Tayler (25:52)

Yeah. And you mentioned sound and the fascia. Before we started recording, you shared a little bit of a story about something that happened for you recently, and I'd love to hear more about it.

Alanna Brennan (26:05)

Yeah. For a long time I've been following Dr. Masaru Emoto's work. I don't know if you've heard of it. Emoto did a study with water, exposing it to different words and different sounds, and watched how the structure of the water crystals would change. And on my healing journey, fascia work has been profoundly helpful and important, so I'm learning more about it. The mainstream medical system doesn't know a lot about fascia. We don't talk about it. We talk about the blood and the muscles, but it's a whole system of the human body. If you have a steak, and you see the white line through the steak, that's the fascia. The fascia is primarily composed of water, and I believe water holds cellular memory. That means the fascia holds emotion and memory. It can hold trauma, and it can hold good memories. And if there is trauma, it's going to get dehydrated and shut down and get tense. When the fascia gets tense, it puts constriction on the muscles and the nerves and the bones, and that can lead to pain.

So you can get your muscles all worked on or whatever, but I'll tell you, the most gentle fascia massage can open you up in ways the deep ones never did. What happened recently was that I had a fascia massage with a woman who has been working for 30 years. She studied in Thailand with the Thai, who are very much about gentleness, and the idea that we don't heal through pushing. Our culture is like, how deep can I dig? How deep can the needle go? I'm going to stick this needle in you and electrocute you. That's not how the Thai operate. I did a lot of the really intense stuff in my younger years, and now I need the gentle.

So she got to a spot in my pelvis where I store a lot of trauma, and I started screaming. I started letting out an angry scream, and it was burning my throat. If you know what it's like to really scream, it can burn your throat, and it was feeling really intense. But what I've learned on my journey of healing and recovery is the concept of alchemy. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, but we can transform it. So after many years of screaming and feeling traumatized, I've now learned, through the voice: wait a second, I'm going to take this scream, I'm going to breathe from my lower belly, I'm going to engage my diaphragm, and I'm going to start to tone.

And so I turned a very traumatic victim scream into tone, while she was opening my fascia. She was basically opening the channels and waterways for my toning to work all the way up my body. If you've seen a lake or a plate or any kind of water, and you get close to it and make sound, you can see the vibration go through it. So I had this incredible co-creative experience of feeling in my own body how the fascia responded to sound, and how we can alchemize our pain and our sound to take our power back. Okay, I still need this release, but I'm in control. I'm in my power. I'm going to release this in a way that feels empowered, and not like a victim.

Ross Tayler (29:33)

And what did you notice about the sound? How did the sound shift as you went through that experience, compared to the yelling?

Alanna Brennan (29:46)

When I was just angry and yelling, I feel like I was yelling from my chest, and my throat got really scratchy. Your body is an instrument, your voice is an instrument. If you blow too hard, you can start to fry your vocal cords, and I could feel my vocal cords frying when I was screaming. Then I took a deep breath, expanded my diaphragm, and engaged my voice in the proper way, which is something I teach: how to release sound in a safe way that's loud and empowering. And it just started energizing me and bringing things back. Then, as she moved to different parts of my body, my voice would intuitively drop to different tones. I wasn't thinking about it. Wherever she went, my body just made the tone it needed. It was very intuitive, and I came up with stars in my eyes. That was something. It's the same as Emoto. He would play heavy metal music to a bottle of water, and then classical music. It was the same concept. I was taking that scream and transforming it.

Ross Tayler (30:58)

When you mentioned the releases, it made me think of a channel I've followed on Instagram for quite a while, all about doing different fascia releases. It's remarkable, the transformation you can physically see in someone's being as they do these releases. It looks quite magical, actually. Some of it is very emotional, because, like you said, there's this primal screaming that comes out. But there's a lot of controversy about it too, because we're so sensitive to witnessing that kind of energy. Historically, we've suppressed it, so it's hard for people to see it being released. And the people having the experience are feeling the release, feeling the flexibility, feeling movement again. These teachers talk about how fascia is everything. There are these two emerging areas of thought. One is the nervous system and polyvagal theory, and then fascia right alongside it. It's really interesting, and you're speaking to both.

Alanna Brennan (32:02)

They're connected, right? It's all connected. The fascia is connected to the nervous system. It's connected to your nerves. It can press on your nerves. Healing the fascia can heal the nervous system, which has been my experience. And yeah, people are really uncomfortable hearing a primal scream, or even making one. So many people suffering with chronic illness and things like that have probably never been angry. I had never been angry, ever. So it can feel really scary to just scream and be angry. But finding the right practitioner, where you feel held and safe, is important. I spent a couple of years just doing the raw, ugly, angry screams before I learned how to alchemize them into, okay, I'm taking my power back now. Because I don't really believe in sidestepping the shadow. We do have to go in there. But we're going in there to understand and learn, and ultimately to learn that you are the force that has survived everything that has ever happened to you. You are infinitely powerful, and you can alchemize this and change it.

Ross Tayler (33:17)

I've been involved in men's groups for about 12 years, and anger comes up a lot. I find it interesting, because on my own journey with anger, I'd like to think I'm more toward conscious anger, which I believe is more rooted and less expressed outward. And yet so many of us aren't familiar with conscious anger, so it can be received as unconscious anger that's more aggressive in nature. That makes sense, because our nervous systems are going to interpret it the way they've experienced those energies before. It's interesting to navigate that when we're trying to be more balanced and aligned and still express our voice, and then it comes back as, you're just being angry at me, and it's not appropriate. And it's like, interesting, because that's not my experience of it. So it's a journey we're all on, trying to realign to what the actual truth is. Growing up, I witnessed lots of rage, with alcoholic parents and fighting and all of those things, so I definitely had an aversion to it, and I think I lost my voice in all of that. And when we're reclaiming, we tend to have to go to the extreme and then find the middle. Do you notice that?

Alanna Brennan (34:35)

Absolutely. Swinging the pendulum is real. I went from being so passive-aggressive to all of a sudden, blah! And people were like, whoa, where did that come from? I didn't know you had any issues with me. Because at that point, if I thought about the other person at all, I'd go straight into empath mode and back into putting them first. So I basically had to blow. But anger, ultimately, in every form, is showing us where boundaries have been crossed. For people who aren't doing the work, they're going to turn around and put that anger on their kids, or whoever. But ultimately, that's anger's purpose. It's showing you where your boundary has been crossed.

So, for example, if you're really angry at someone, you can have a voice practice in a safe place, where you get it out to the point where you can get your head on straight and think, okay, how am I going to communicate with this person in a way that sets a boundary, without taking my anger out on them? I used to have an old, dilapidated shed that I would go smash glass in. I had ways to get my anger out. It's important to get anger out. It's just, how do we do it in a safe and healthy way? And then also set the boundaries we need to set, so we're not angry at that person again.

Ross Tayler (35:55)

I'm curious about your perspective on boundaries, because when I would teach, or try to teach, boundaries at the treatment centre, what often happened is that talking about boundaries reminded people of all the boundaries they didn't set. So it's hard to get to the conversation about healthy boundaries when the nervous system is releasing all of those past times, all those noes that didn't get expressed. Tell me about your journey with boundaries, and supporting people with sound, because it's such an important piece of reclaiming our voice and our boundaries.

Alanna Brennan (36:37)

Yeah, we can be really angry at ourselves, looking back, for not setting boundaries. I definitely feel that. It's not just that they did it, it's that I let them. We can be really angry at our past selves for not setting boundaries. We can be angry at our parents for not protecting us and setting those boundaries when we were young. And, like you said with the pendulum, if your nervous system is in a really traumatized place, you might need to set some really sharp boundaries. That's okay for a period of time, while you're healing. You might need a full stop, a full break, until you can figure out who you are without pleasing that person, and then come back to it, maybe with the support of a therapist, and with healthy boundaries. So I do think that as we come out of people pleasing, as we come out of abuse, the boundaries can be a bit more severe. And then as we grow and heal, and get to know ourselves, and not just who we are in serving other people, it gets easier, and we become less reactive.

Because originally, like you said, there are so many noes that haven't been expressed that the first boundary comes out, blah, and the person who got it didn't deserve all of that, but it was so many years of repressed noes. And then, as you work through it, and take accountability for your own stuff and your own anger, you can learn how to set them. I set one recently with a friend. I said, I need to take a step back from old relationships right now to focus on getting the support I need, and I wish you well. I didn't get into the whole, you didn't do this for me. When we get into that, we're opening a door. And if you're focused on yourself and your healing, you don't need to open those doors. You can just say, I love you, and I need some space until you're ready to have those conversations. You don't have to get into the why. Just set them with respect.

Ross Tayler (38:39)

Right, because, as many people teach, no is a complete sentence.

Alanna Brennan (38:43)

Yeah. I still have so much guilt every time I set a boundary. And that's part of the journey. You learn that that's your need to put others first, and that you care. You don't want to make people feel bad, and that's great. But I was taught to keep the peace, until I learned whose peace I was keeping.

Ross Tayler (39:03)

Right. And I think most of us have been on the receiving end of a boundary that wasn't delivered nicely, or didn't feel good. So, as sensitives, we don't want to recreate that experience for someone else. And yet, one of my favourite teachers uses the phrase, boundaries are a way of being a good friend to ourselves. I really like that, because it puts it into perspective. We have to be there for ourselves first, and when we are, we start to feel better about ourselves. There might be an impact, but we're actually seeing the truth of who's in front of us when they respond negatively to our boundary. The truth gets revealed really quickly.

Alanna Brennan (39:48)

Yes. I've been working through this right now, because I had to get to the point where my physical life was on the line in order to set boundaries. I had to get to the point where I was actually going to die before I did it. Honestly, I believe that as a soul, I set that up so that I would absolutely get this done, because otherwise I'd probably still be a people pleaser. But something the injury and illness I've gone through has taught me is that some people love you for who you are, and some people love you for what you give. And when you start to set boundaries, you're going to see who's who. Because when it's not about them, and about you meeting their needs, you're going to see how they react. It's a really painful and valuable lesson to go through.

Ross Tayler (40:35)

Yeah. And for many of us, the intensity of that is what we're avoiding. I refer to it as an emotional wave, the energy that comes toward us after we set a boundary. That's what we're so sensitive to. We get overwhelmed by it. And then we realize, that's not mine, it's actually the other person's. You can keep that. That's not mine. I don't need to take that on. It takes training to teach our nervous system to do that. But once you've done it once, it gets easier, and then easier, and then easier. I actually had to set a boundary today, and it was so easy, so natural. Like, yeah, I'm not actually going to do that, because that's not okay for me.

Alanna Brennan (41:25)

Absolutely. For anyone listening, it gets easier the more you practice, the more you stay with yourself and understand that people's reactions have nothing to do with you. Your reactions don't tend to have much to do with the other person, either. But it does get easier.

Ross Tayler (41:41)

Yeah. The other piece you've mentioned, and it's subtle, is this connection to the body. I work with a lot of men, and we tend to focus from our heads up, and there's a disconnection from the body. So how does sound help us reconnect to the body in a way that lets us realize the benefits?

Alanna Brennan (42:03)

Yeah. Sound is literally getting you into your body, because you're breathing into your lower belly, you're expanding your diaphragm, which is near your heart and your chest, and you're connecting all the way to your root and up your spinal cord. For men, and I'm going to use the words yin and yang, because the words masculine and feminine are pretty loaded in our culture right now, but we all have yin and yang, right? I've heard this quote: men are not taught how to be men, they're taught how not to be girls. So they're taught to disconnect from the feminine, which is the body, which is Mother Earth. And for men, the feminine centre is the heart. That's where the emotion lives. From a very young age, they're told, don't be like that, live in your head.

But I'm sure you can attest to this: when we run away to our heads, it's not that we're not being emotional. It's that we're letting our subconscious completely take over. So often men will shut down, avoid, react, and that's actually them letting their emotions take over completely. When they rage, or when they punch, it's not the masculine approach you might think it is. It's actually avoidance and running away. It's not mastery. Actually dropping into the heart and being in the heart is way harder. It's harder to feel than not to feel. It takes way more strength. I think it's a paradigm shift for men in what strength is and what mastery is. Master your heart, master your emotions, and don't be a slave to your subconscious, because it will take over when you run away to your head.

Ross Tayler (43:49)

Yeah. And you're right, emotion just wants to express. It comes out sideways, even though someone might say, I'm not angry. It comes out all the time, and they don't realize it. That was me, for sure. I would express anger and frustration and not realize I was doing it, because I was so in my head. And when I started to become aware of it, I started to change. It was like, wow. These energies take us over. They rise within us and want to be expressed, and it takes a lot of force to keep them down. So being in our heads is a protective measure, a way to avoid connecting to all that emotion that wants to be expressed.

Alanna Brennan (44:31)

Yeah. And I think maybe for men, it's, am I not safe if I rage? But that goes back to, how can you let this out in a safe, productive way, whether it's at the gym, or... I'm such a huge supporter of men's work and men's circles, because men need it, and boys need it. Men leading other men and going out in the woods, do what you guys need to do, but find healthy and productive ways to let it out. Like the saying goes, there are two wolves inside you, which one are you going to feed? Are you letting the wolf pull you by the lead, or are you in control of it? And that's true for all of us, I think.

Ross Tayler (45:14)

And all of this comes back to connecting, and reconnecting, to our authentic, aligned self. What do you notice shifts when we reconnect to that part of ourselves, and what is the impact?

Alanna Brennan (45:28)

Yeah. When you are living in truth, you're going to feel a lot more grounded. When you're wondering what's true, you can feel it in the body. You'll feel the truth in your body. Like I said, I had some deep denial about things that happened in my childhood, and when I let them be true, my whole system relaxed. Not because it was an easy, fun truth, but because it was true. So the more we come into alignment with truth, the more we come into our bodies. And the more we come into our bodies, the more we're able to listen to what's actually true.

When we're living in our heads... someone asked me this, how do I know what's true? They were telling me about an ex who was abusive. And I asked, well, was your stomach tight around that person? Oh, yeah, maybe. When we live so far in our heads, we can't hear our body's cues. Our body is always telling us when things are off, when things aren't in alignment. But we have to learn to come back into the body to hear it. And when we start to come back in, it can be very uncomfortable, because we've been through some heavy trauma, right? There's no getting around it. There's no around, there's only through. People can avoid doing the work to get back into their bodies, because they're going to have to face the pain of what the body has been through. But it gets you back in touch with your compass. Your body is always going to tell you what's true and what's best for you. And I'm still learning to listen. It's a lifetime of learning, but we do get better at it.

Ross Tayler (47:04)

I listened to a teacher who described all the trauma, all the things we store in our bodies, as white noise, the noise that prevents our intuition and those inner instincts from rising up. The moment you start to clear that white noise, all of a sudden you get more in touch with your intuition, and that voice gets to speak louder, and you can hear it, because it's not having to fight through all that noise. I really like that, and it feels like that's what you're saying: that's part of what gets reclaimed on this journey.

Alanna Brennan (47:38)

Absolutely. And fear can block our intuition. There's a reason the media and the powers that be keep us in a state of fear, so that we can't feel our truth or connect with it as easily. That's real. Being in fight or flight makes it harder to hear that voice. So we can use sound, we can use breathwork, toning. Every ancient civilization has used chant and mantra to go into a state of trance, where we can access that and get back to it. That's something I do when I'm in fight or flight. I'll chant, or do a mantra, to get back to my centre.

Ross Tayler (48:14)

Yeah. And you're referring to medicine that's 5,000-plus years old.

Alanna Brennan (48:22)

More than that, way, way older. As old as humans, because in the beginning there was sound. We are sound. It's as old as we are.

Ross Tayler (48:34)

So this feels like a good place to pause our conversation. We've covered lots of ground, and I really appreciate all the places we've gone. I always like to close with the same question, so I'll ask you: what is one simple way that someone could connect with the sacred today?

Alanna Brennan (48:51)

I'm going to say through sound, because that's what this whole podcast has been about. I'm going to invite people to do the little drop-in we did at the beginning, to hum and to tone, maybe just a simple om. If you've ever been to a yoga class, you've felt the power when we all om together. I'm going to invite you to connect with the sacredness of your own creation, your own ability to create. Because sound is you, as the creator, creating. You are the divine.

Ross Tayler (49:25)

Love that, thank you. I'm going to share all your information in the show notes, so people will be able to reach out to you on Instagram and through your website. I'm really grateful that you took the time to have this conversation. Thank you for sharing your perspectives and your work. I really enjoyed our time together.

Alanna Brennan (49:43)

Thank you so much, Ross. It's been so wonderful to be here. And yes, you can reach out to me through my website. If you're interested in any of my upcoming courses, classes or events, I would love to make sound with you.

Ross Tayler (49:57)

Awesome, thanks so much.

Ross Tayler (49:58)

Thank you for joining us on Sacred Sundays. I hope something in today's offering spoke to your spirit, stirred something true, or simply gave you a moment to breathe. If this conversation resonated, please subscribe, rate, or share. It truly helps this work reach the people who are meant to find it. If you'd like to step inside my world a little further, I host a free live practice three mornings a week called Start With You. Just 20 minutes on Zoom to return to your own energy. Everything you need can be found at the link in the show notes. Until next time, may your day be slow and sacred.