Seven years ago I participated in a meditation program and met Alison Anton, a Goddess of healing and integrity.
I’ll never forget the moment I saw stars. During the program’s Q&A Alison stood up and asked the guru about heeding the inner call to greatness. No offense Buddhism, but when the focus is on losing the self and realizing emptiness, Q’s like this one are few and far between. Afterward, I introduced myself to Alison and thanked her for the bold Q. Our friendship instantly took flight.
Alison is a medical intuitive. What’s that? Read on as she brilliantly answers the important stuff below. At the end there is a special offer for VOLVER readers (which I am definitely going to pounce on.) I love the work she is doing and I love even more that she is doing it. Without further ado, it is my great pleasure to bring you Returning with Alison Anton:
What exactly is Medical Intuition?
Medical intuition is using clairvoyance (or other intuitive faculties) to “look” into a person’s energetic and physical anatomy. For some practitioners the purpose is to identify or diagnose medical conditions. I don’t use it for diagnosis, but to help people tap into the underlayment of energy, karma and emotion in relation to their ailments or specific health conditions.
How did you come to find that you had this gift? How did you develop it?
Actually, I don’t see clairvoyance as a gift—it comes with the human body. I think most people use it, but don’t realize they are. I was trained to use my clairvoyance in my mid-twenties, and have been honing that skill ever since. My interest in health and medicine sprang from years of struggling with three auto-immune conditions; I then found myself studying nutrition, food, functional medicine and bodywork to help myself, and to help others who were sick. At one point I realized how valuable it would be if I put functional medicine and intuitive medicine together.
What would you say to someone who is very curious about a session but a little skeptical or afraid?
Fear is pretty normal for people who have never had a reading. Some people are a little scared of what I might say; others might think I’m going to judge them. Truth is, if a reading doesn’t VALIDATE a person in a major way, something’s wrong… (NOT with the person getting the reading, but with the person giving it). In everyone’s life, there are karmic challenges that show up physically as tension, stress and possibly disease. Yet underlying these karmic “hot spots” lay strengths, abilities and spiritual characteristics so remarkable it’s often hard to express in words. How I see it: constricted, charged, tense, sick or fearful areas almost always have the most ability behind them. So unless someone’s afraid of their own abilities or healing themselves (which happens a lot, BTW) there’s not much to be afraid of!
What was the dumbest thing that you used to believe?
I used to believe that I could heal my body by force. I believed that if I ate all the “right” foods, exercised enough, and stopped my “emotional eating” that my body would be well. I basically believed that the body was separate enough from the mind that I could use it like a slave and force it to “behave”. What I didn’t fully realize was that if we don’t work from the mind-level to re-program old patterns, it’s like screaming at a tape recorder and telling it to record. Ironically, I’ve found, that once we’ve healed this level of the mind, the body-related expectations and goals that we thought were so important are (magically) not so important anymore.
How have you learned to handle mistakes and losses?
Of all the things in my life that have helped me develop spiritually, mistakes are IT (and believe me, I’ve made a lot of them). I actually seem to have a certain karma for making mistakes. It’s not about the mistakes, per se, but my REACTIONS to them. It seems I’m learning to become acutely aware of the unconscious programs that well up with my mistakes (i.e. “You’re stupid”, “You don’t belong”, “You’re not perfect”). If I don’t react to them, it’s totally transformative—like being humble and confident at the same time. Likewise, if I DO react to them, I get to look at why I still believe these lies that are in my space. It’s a win-win either way.
I am going to play that word game with you and give you one word and you tell me the first thing that comes to mind: healing.
Healing is a frame of mind, and a way of learning how to perceive the world from spiritual eyes. Healing is learning to see all beings (including ourselves) not just as these bodies, but as remarkable beings capable of… ANYTHING. In my opinion, to be healed has little to do with the body. The body is neutral, and will follow the direction of the mind. So healing always starts at the mind level. How do we want to use these emotions? What purpose do we want for this illness? If we can be flexible and forgiving enough to be in present time with our situation (health, relationships, trials and tribulations) we can truly say we’re healing.
Sigh, now you can see why I have a crush.
If you are struggling with an issue that has mainstream medical practitioners scratching their heads, this could be just the perspective you need. Alison is offering a generous discount to VOLVER readers: 50% Off Medical Intuition Readings (!). Readings must be purchased by December 31,2011 and redeemed by January 31, 2012. Use this special link to score her goodness: http://bit.ly/juROaG
To find out more about Alison’s amazing work, please visit: AntonHealing.com
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December 13, 2011
If you are new to this site, I am a huge fan of Orgasmic Meditation (OM).
A few months ago, I passed through Boulder, CO and had the fortune of being invited to observe an OMing demo (yes, I observed a live demonstration of the OMing technique … it was amazing.) The demo was hosted by the beautiful and wise Kelly Notaras. I am ever grateful that my first introduction to the world of OM was with someone so masterful as Kelly.
In 2010, Kelly left her Associate Publisher position with spirituality publisher Sounds True and moved to San Francisco to study slow sex, man-woman dynamics, and communication under Nicole Daedone—the founder of OneTaste and the creator of OM. During her time at OneTaste, Kelly edited Nicole’s book Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm, co-led several couples retreats with Nicole, and served as faculty for the 2011 OneTaste Certified Coach Training Program, all while living at 1080 Folsom, a vibrant community of over 50 OM practitioners. Now back in Colorado, she is sharing what she’s learned about this transformative practice through workshops and consulting with men, women and couples.
I am in LOVE with this interview. It is rich with practical gems that illustrate the radical truth of OM. Read carefully, sisters. Kelly has something very important to share.
It is my great pleasure to bring you this Returning Interview with Kelly Notaras:
Please tell us how you found OMing and your involvement with the book?
It started when I accidentally walked into the OneTaste building in San Francisco. I was in California on my way to a meditation retreat and was staying with a friend nearby. I had no idea what OneTaste was, and certainly didn’t know that it had anything to do with sexuality or orgasm. I just liked the building. I remember thinking, “These are my people,” but I had no idea why! A few weeks later I read an article in the New York Times called “The Pleasure Principle.” It featured a center in the SOMA district of San Francisco called OneTaste that was “devoted to the art of the female orgasm.” I about plotzed. I sent the link to all my friends and was like, “Can you believe I walked into this place??” But still, I didn’t have a clue it had anything to do with me. (At the time I didn’t think I was a very sexual person. I was a Buddhist, thank you very much.)
A few weeks later I got a call from a friend of mine who works for a New York literary agency. She said they had a new author who needed some help on her book proposal, and she thought I should do it. I was the VP of Sounds True at the time and the last thing I needed was more work, but when she said it was about Orgasmic Meditation I was like, “You have GOT to be kidding me. I’ll do it.”
So I helped OneTaste’s founder Nicole Daedone with her book proposal and eventually the book itself. (It’s called Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm and it just published in May.) Once I met Nicole in person I realized this wasn’t just a writing gig. I saw something in her that I wanted, and I knew she was going to be very important in my life. A few months after that I went to San Francisco to try OMing, and I got hooked. I decided to move there for a month—and stayed for a year and a half.
How has your life benefited from your OMing practice?
This is such a difficult question to answer without hyperbole. I’ll just say that I woke up one morning about 6 months after I started OMing and realized that I would not change a single thing about my life. This was huge for me, because I had been chronically dissatisfied for the first 33 years on the planet. Something about making a commitment to OM shifted things that my meditation practice never touched. I started to know what my body wanted, and then started following that desire. Where it led was—and continues to be—a rich, connected, effortlessly joyful place.
But in terms of more concrete benefits, I can say I have more energy and vitality, don’t need as much sleep, can feel other people more deeply, have increased intuition, have way less scarcity around relationships, can communicate better, and feel much safer being honest in all areas of my life.
And of course, sex is more sensational. I’m physically much more sensitive now. I’ve also come to appreciate the difference between climax—a momentary release of sexual energy—and orgasm. Orgasm, as I am using it here, is the experience of sensation in the body. It has peaks and valleys and subtle nuances I’d never noticed before. It’s here all the time, to greater or lesser degrees, and it gets drawn out through connection with other people.
How has your experience with OMing influenced how you view spirituality?
Wow, how much time do you have? I would say that when I first encountered Nicole, she pointed out that my spiritual path was all about transcending suffering. I talked about “oneness” but what I really meant was “escape from the stuff that hurts.” I meditated to escape the painful parts of human experience, to work my way into a state of expansive, blissful peace where I became translucent and untouchable. At first I was like, totally! That’s exactly what I want! But then Nicole pointed out that my version of so-called “oneness” honored only half the picture. Life contains both the bitter and the sweet. In her terminology, life is a cycle that includes both “up” and “down,” but I had a raging predisposition for “up.”
That’s one of the deeper spiritual teachings embedded in OM. When you OM, you’re learning how to feel, approve of, and receive whatever “stroke” comes your way. The ones you “like” and the ones you don’t. If you can learn to take pleasure from every stroke life has to offer, you can wake up right in the middle of the relative world. You don’t have to fear anything anymore, because you can trust yourself to be in relationship with whatever circumstances come up. Life becomes a complex, satisfying game where your ability to play is unconditional.
I realized I’d been doing a massive spiritual bypass by pushing away certain experiences I deemed inappropriate, unsavory, painful, or otherwise mundane. I began to reincorporate what you might call the “darker” side of human experience into my everyday life, and watched my overall satisfaction increase almost immediately. OM came in handy in that way. In Western culture, our sexuality is our dark side. Or I should say, our dark side is brimming with sex. Even if we fully own that we enjoy sex (which I never did, by the way) we still keep it hidden away. We do it in the dark and don’t talk about it in polite company. I took a different path with OM. I began openly practicing it at first, then I stepped out and started talking about it publicly. That was a big move—the first time I posted about OM on Facebook! It was a banner day. I still remember where I was sitting. But that, for me, was a spiritual act—because owning your sex is an act of unconditional freedom.
What is the dumbest thing you used to believe?
This one is complex but I’ll try to explain. It was my belief that men didn’t really like me and I had to work to get their attention. Not long after I started OMing I had an experience in a workshop where we had to choose a partner for an exercise. I looked up and realized every man in the room was trying to get my attention—they all wanted me to pick them! In that moment, it’s like a whole belief system fell crashing to the ground. I realized I’d been unaware of the extent of men’s interest in me—probably my whole life. I can only assume it was some sort of coping mechanism I developed in childhood to help manage sexual shame. But whatever the reason, I’d been unwilling to see the amount of interest that was coming my way because it was overwhelming on some level.
In order to maintain my belief that men didn’t like me, I had to create a corollary belief that if a man was interested in me, he was suspect and/or creepy. As a result I mostly dated people who felt safe—either whose power didn’t match my own (so they could never really hurt me) or who literally weren’t interested in me at all. But of course I didn’t see any of this at the time.
If you had the ear of all the women in the world for one minute, what would you want them to know?
That they can live their lives from a state of fullness rather than depletion, and the place to start is by cultivating orgasm in their bodies. I’m not talking about climax, I’m talking about investigating the terrain of their own sexual sensation, whatever that looks like. Sensation is the thing we crave. It’s what we’re looking for when we buy that new pair of shoes or that ice cream sundae or that glass of Prosecco. The place it can be found most readily is in right here in our very own bodies.
Also, I would tell them that men (and other women) exist who are willing to come together and have a goalless orgasmic experience. One that is not about “getting off” and comes with no strings—emotional or sexual—attached. I want every woman to know that and to have access to it, because our lives change when we learn how to receive quality attention from others. To be willing to let someone set aside the time and energy to make us feel good—that one act can change everything.
Can you pull a Tarot card for this interview? What does that card mean to you?
Love it! I pulled the Queen of Pentacles. This is actually my personal “signifier” card, meaning the card that represents me in the deck. This is both because of my astrological sign (Capricorn, an earth sign) and also my physical appearance (dark hair and eyes). The Queen of Pentacles is the essence of earth energy—the queen of the physical and material world. She represents the experience of being a spiritual being in human form. She knows the joy of embodiment. She revels in both the dark and the light aspects of our human experience, because she’s surrounded by nature and the natural world holds both without shame or preference. Of all the Queens in the deck, she’d definitely be the one most likely to OM! In the context of this interview, it says to me that I’m right where I’m supposed to be. 
For those of you in Boulder and/or with Boulder peeps, Kelly’s next Intro to OM Workshop is Saturday, November 12th from 9:30-5:30. Click here for details.
Website: www.KellyNotaras.com
Twitter: @kellynotaras
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November 1, 2011
In case you haven’t heard yet, August has become Mama Gena month, as I am serving up the Volver goods in service of inspiring you to do her online bootcamp.
This is the last post and is truly the grandest finale. I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Anne Davin, Mama Gena’s creative partner and as Regena so lovingly describes her: “The Force Behind The Force.”
This interview makes my heart swoon for two reasons:
First, Anne is a depth psychotherapist and since I have a background in psychotherapy, her views and words take my soul back through time. When you read the interview you will see what I mean.
Secondly, the School of Womanly Arts is about unfurling the feminine through fun and pleasure. In the spiritual circles I travel in, I suspect many roll their eyes at this idea … like I first did (“Sure, pleasure … that’s … cute.”) However, when one dares to follow their call and walk through the school’s doors, you are reconnected with the most ancient and sacred aspects of yourself. This interview gives you a clear glimpse of the school’s profound work.
Without further ado, it is my greatest pleasure to bring you this Returning Interview with one of my greatest teachers, Dr. Anne Davin.
Right now in this moment, what is your top gratitude?
I am exceedingly grateful for my terrific man who has loved me for the past ten years. His love for me has allowed me to risk way past who I thought I was. Because of him, every day I become a better version of myself. My capacity to serve life through all my creative gifts and what I value most has grown exponentially. This relationship is a direct consequence of my studies as a SWA student.
How did you come to find and attend the school?
A colleague recommended Regena’s book to me in 2006. I read it and was hugely intrigued by her message and her method, so I signed up for a correspondence course. Regena and I became immediate friends. It was clear that my professional experience and life experience as a young wife living in a Native American pueblo in the Southwest could contribute to the SWA teachings and philosophy. How? I saw then what I continue to stand for today: that the SWA is a modern-day global village of women who, by practicing the Tools and Arts, initiate one another into spiritually maturing women. It’s a cultural and personal right of passage in which a woman comes face-to-face with who she is as a sentient being. A woman’s turn on and sensuality is seen as a place where she encounters herself spiritually.
In mother cultures (indigenous), humans saw the holy in all things, especially nature. They felt it was their role to literally keep the holy alive in our world by seducing it with eloquent speech, courting it through acts of beauty, feeding it through ritual and ceremony, and embodying it as sensual beings. There was no separation between the erotic and being human. You were not fully human unless you were living your erotic nature. Every initiated man and woman was seen as a courtesan of the divine. And, it was their union with one another that called forth the greatest presencing of this divine encounter.
Tucked behind the SWA’s pink boas, tiaras, and the philosophy of the Tools and Arts, not to mention the vehicle of its delivery, Regena’s charismatic teaching, is this essential perspective. Sister Goddesses are women who are restoring this deep knowing and live it actively in their very modern worlds.
As a psychotherapist, how has your experience with the school influenced how you view/practice psychotherapy?
Traditional psychotherapy lends itself well to reflecting on and naming one’s personal history. Hundreds of techniques for doing so are practiced every day by counselors who seek to minimize the emotional suffering of their clients. I used to be one of them. My experience at the SWA has shifted my practice of psychotherapy tremendously because I now focus on increasing a client’s tolerance for pleasure.
Therapy has to liberate itself from the consulting room and consider the social conditions of a woman’s life. Women have been socially conditioned to think negatively about themselves and therefore not only require new thinking but a community to reinforce a healthy lifestyle. Women require a way of communicating that reflects the language of their “psyche,” the latin word for soul. This language is the language of pleasure, in which a woman reveals her desires and celebrates herself as uniquely woman.
Women are made of pleasure right down to their biology. And, it is through pleasure-practices that a woman opens to her full potential and emotional health. I now draw on the best of what traditional therapy has to offer and use the Tools and Arts in the form of homework with clients to assist them in living in a new way. If you are interested in more of my thoughts on pleasure and women’s emotional health check out my article “A Clinical Case for Pleasure.”
What excites you about your new bootcamp program?
I absolutely love the Virtual Pleasure Boot Camp curriculum. When I saw that Regena had not taught her book Mama Gena’s School of Womanly Arts, which introduces all of the Tools and Arts, I was thrilled to design it. We live in a culture that renders us handless maidens. You know the mythology? A woman is victimized so badly that she becomes lost and helpless against the challenges of her inner and outer life. She suffers without taking real action towards her happiness.
Virtual Pleasure Boot Camp is the direct route to changing this in every woman. The methodological teaching and practicing of each Tool and Art grows a woman’s hands and therefore her power to transform her world in the direction of her deepest desires. Doing this within a ten-week period is just the kind of intensity that can make for sustained pleasure and happiness where there was once ongoing pain.
For those of you who like the real deal and want to be a part of one of the greatest reclamations on the planet (in my always adorable opinion), Regena and Anne deliver. I am a LOUD and PROUD affiliate. Click here to see and hear more of Anne and Regena AND to potentially make this one of your most important years as a woman.
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August 27, 2011
This post includes some of my adorable opinions about childbirth in our western world. I by no means want to disrespect any woman who desired/desires mainstream medical intervention, for whatever reason. Only you know what it right for you and I completely revere this truth.
In my first pregnancy, though I walked out of the hospital with a healthy baby girl, delivering her came with a lot of unnecessary medical intervention that left me with a ton of guilt and regret. As many women experience, the birth process is an entire world unto itself that seems to all too often blatantly disregard the desires of mom. With this as my reference point, about halfway through my second pregnancy, I could no longer disregard the dread I was feeling about my upcoming delivery. I was studying with Mama Gena at the time and she referred me to Sheila Kamara Hay. In one amazing phone call, Sheila turned my entire world around and put the power right back in my hands. As fate should have it, when I went into labor with my son, I was thrown many medical curve balls. This time, I met all of them with buckets of right-brain brilliance and ultimately arrived at the birth of my desires.
Sisters, to be blunt, the western world’s perspective towards childbirth SUCKS. While I am on-my-knees grateful for all of the lives allopathic medicine saves, way more often than not, it disrespects women and disconnects them from a power and a process that will never have any words.
Thankfully, Sheila is organizing and leading an indomitable group of feminine leaders who are putting the “P” back in childbirth. She has a tele-summit just around the corner with the HOTTEST lineup of pleasure and birth gurus. If you are interested in a view that leaves a woman’s esteem intact no matter what happens during her birth OR know a pregnant woman who desires this information, DO NOT miss this summit. She generously extended a $100 discount for Volver readers (coupon code: VOLVER.) It is my GREAT pleasure to introduce Returning With Sheila Kamara Hay of Ecstatic Birth:
In this moment what is your top brag, top gratitude and top desire?
I brag that I have created an incredible course for women to learn how to connect more deeply with their bodies and that I’ve got a roster of teachers that are my heroines in the worlds of sensuality and birth. I’m so grateful for the enthusiasm and outright LUST this material is being received with, like the world is truly hungry for this information- on how a woman can reclaim childbirth from our cultural heritage of pain, fear, and victimization and create a new one full of joy, pleasure, and empowerment. I desire to have over 300 registrants for this ground-breaking series.
If you had all the women in the worlds ear for one minute, what would you want them to know?
I would want them to know that there is a whole other way to birth than what we see in the mainstream media. I would want them know that childbirth has an enormous capacity for transformative pleasure and that this is a rite of passage to motherhood.
What was your inspiration in creating Ecstatic-Birth
My inspiration was my own personal experience, wanting to create a birth that was full of love and joy and pleasure and not really knowing how. After experiencing one medicalized birth, I decided that if I was ever going to do it again it would have to be completely different. And I researched everywhere, read everything, practiced all kinds of things, worked my ass off to create a birth that was beautiful and powerful and zen the second time around. The third time, I knew I could do it, so I wanted to see if I could enjoy it and that was where I put my attention. I learned sooo much through the process that I was inspired to create Ecstatic Birth and share what I have learned.
What was the dumbest thing that you used to believe?
That there was an objective “best” out there- like the “best doctor” or the “best hospital” with my first birth. I now know that there is only what is best for me and that can be different for each person.
What is your vision for the world and how might we arrive there?
My vision for the world is that we see birth as a sacred rite of passage that isn’t separate and distinct from the pleasures of baby-making, but the culmination of it. To arrive there, women need to reclaim and reconnect with their bodies and their sexuality and all the wisdom and pleasure that lie within.
SING. IT. SISTER.
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April 13, 2011
One of the many perks of attending The School of Womanly Arts is that you get to hang with some of the most powerful women on the planet. This is where I met the undeniably ultra-divine Rochelle Schieck, creator of Qoya. Rochelle’s enchanting light is impossible to miss. She allures women to know their soul’s truth through a liberating movement practice that she named Qoya. Weaving the wisdom of yoga, the wildness of creative expression and freedom of sensual dance, it is no wonder that Qoya is the Quechan word for Queen.
It is my great pleasure to introduce Returning with Rochelle Schieck:
If you had the ear of all the women in the world for just one minute, what would you want them to know?
Through movement, we remember. We remember, as women that we are inherently wise, wild and free. Qoya, the movement system I created, is based on this idea that through the wisdom of yoga, the creative expression in dance and the liberation to enjoy oneself through sensual movement we can tap into our essence and feel the sacred dancing through us and us dancing through it. Through movement we can start to feel that same life force that makes trees grow, waves in the ocean rise and fall, dogs’ tails’ wag and the earth spin around the sun is the same pulse of life that animates our own body.
Let’s do an experiment. Shake your right hand for 10 seconds as fast as you can. Then bring both hands up and feel the difference between your right and left hand.
While we may be used to feeling a duller “going through the motions” left hand sort of existence. The zing that you feel in the right hand is always available to you. The feelings of happiness, pleasure, joy, depth, expression, connection to the sacred that we all seek in our outer world are stored within our cells and through movement we can learn to call them out.
Verbally, that’s what I would say aloud. Energetically, I would say to each woman, “With everything that I am, I believe in you.” And I would hope that she believed in herself too.
If you could spend 24 hours with anyone in the world, it doesn’t matter if they are alive or passed on, who would it be and why?
I would want to spend my time with Bob Dylan. The back story is: we are both from Minnesota, both Gemini’s and both identify with the revolutionary/counter culture archetype that pays more attention to the inner intuitive voice than the outer voice or status quo.
I would want to hear stories about l writing songs in the 60′s with the confidence of an old soul in a young person’s body. I would ask about his thoughts on using art, in his case music, as a way to bring voice and expression during times of great change like he did with civil rights and the anti-war movement. I would ask about his creative process and his thoughts on how he maintained his authentic voice for over five decades creating music. I would tell him that I grew up never meeting my father, so in times in my life where I needed fatherly guidance, I would put Bob Dylan on shuffle and surrender to whatever wise words would come through. Right now, I remember a tender time where he reminded me, “She’s got everything she needs, she’s an artist, she don’t look back.”
What is the intersection between shamanism and the divine feminine?
After a passionate study of the divine feminine for many years, I found myself in tears in my first introduction to shamanism. This was an unbroken lineage of energy healing for thousands of years all in service to the divine feminine. The divine feminine being mother earth. Many of the metaphors of healing are done through connection with nature as a way to connect with spirit. One of my most powerful overlaps of the divine feminine and shamanism was during a pilgrimage to the sacred mountain Salkantay outside of Cusco. All of the mountains around Cusco ground a particular energy and this mountain was said to hold the energy of the “Undomesticated Feminine.” In addition, shamans believe that when you die your body goes back to the earth from which you came, your spirit goes to the heavens, but all the knowledge you acquired goes to the mountaintops. Many medicine men and women will hike to the tops of mountains and meditate to access knowledge to their questions. We hiked 16,000 feet over 5 days, took breaks to be in awe at the wild avalanches and at the top of that mountain is where I received the clarity of my message for Qoya that our nature is wise, wild AND free. It was there that I saw that Qoya is an opportunity to express and embody the full range of woman from kind and wise, nurturing and soulful caretakers of spirit, sensual and erotic, fierce and protective and wildly wildly creative. All of us.
I am going to play that word game with you and give you one word and you tell me the first thing that comes to mind: magic.
The first thing I think of is a picture of the universe on a subatomic level. I see the deeper reality that we are all a combination of stardust, of light, of vibration and as woo-woo as that may sound modern science, specifically quantum physics, can prove our subatomic nature is mostly atoms dancing in space. So, in honor of that, I think of the peak of Qoya’s free dance portion of class replicating that vision. Everyone moving their bodies as wise, wild and free in space. Quoting Albert Einstein, I would substitute the word magic below for miracle. I pray that we open more and more to the magic and the miracles that are always there.
“There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” -Albert Einstein
If you want to know more and/or desire to experience the incredible gift of Qoya, click here. Rochelle’s next retreat is in Costa Rica this April 16 – 23, 2011.
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March 23, 2011
Being that I am completely dazzled by mothers who successfully establish online businesses, there was no missing the radiant light of Julie Wray. Her online biz ShopOlivine is a genius blend of sexy AND comfortable apparel for women (that seems to be taking over my closet.) Without further ado, I bring you Ms. Julie Wray and her inspiring insights on motherhood, women, and business.
Julie, you are an online business rockstar who is a lover of all things divinely feminine. How has your feminine essence inspired your business life?
Thank you, it’s true. I flirt with everybody as often as possible. My husband and son (that’s a given), the USPS lady (and I get the most amazing service from her!!) and my customers (who are not used to being flirted with by online customer service … and they LOVE it). I try to do everything with a sense of humor and I never take my business too seriously. It is there to serve me, not the other way around!
You brilliantly made the move from a brick and mortar business to an online shop, just before the arrival of your son Johnny (now nine months old.) What has been fabulous about this decision? What has been challenging?
The truly fabulous part is that I have been able to orchestrate working around his naps and actually get so much done. The challenging part is that my business has gotten so busy that I don’t have time to do anything else while he is napping! Hence the newly hired assistant…
Where do you think most women flail with solopreneurship?
Fear. So many women are afraid to fail so they never even begin their lifelong dream of starting their own business. It makes me so sad!
If you had all the women in the world’s ear for one minute, what would you want them to know?
Create your dreams, follow your pleasure and find joy in every day.
What was the dumbest thing that you used to believe?
That I had to chase love to create a loving relationship. That I had to chase business ideas to make them happen. The best love and the best business ideas come naturally, not forced.
If you could spend 24 hours with anyone in the world, it doesn’t matter if they are alive or dead, who would it be and why?
Eve Ensler – This woman is phenomenal. Every time I hear her speak I absolutely melt into her stories. I have learned so much from her about what it truly means to be a woman, and to own being a woman. Could I just sit and listen to her talk for those 24 hours? That would be heavenly…
Do you have any words of wisdom for women who are desiring to break into the online world?
Start now and quit waiting!
How do you pick the lines you carry?
I pick the lines I carry based on a few things: I must love it. I either wear it or use it myself … Or I would wear it if it looked good on me! I MUST like the people I am buying from. If I don’t then the deal is off. Fashion is not a driving force behind what I buy, I listen to myself instead.
How have you learned to handle mistakes and losses?
I learned that huge lesson from the Goddess Danielle Laporte. Move on, quickly. I don’t hang on to plans that flop anymore, I release them quickly. I used to forge through no matter what, afraid that I would look like a failure if I didn’t. In reality, nobody cares!
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November 9, 2010
