Spiritual Fitness: Letting Go vs. Giving Up with Danielle LaPorte

Summary

Podcast Summary: BETTER! with Dr. Stephanie Estima

Episode: Spiritual Fitness: Letting Go vs. Giving Up with Danielle LaPorte
Date: August 10, 2026
Guest: Danielle LaPorte – Best-selling author, speaker, and creator of "Bless and Release"
Host: Dr. Stephanie Estima

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Episode Overview

In this profoundly insightful conversation, Dr. Stephanie Estima and guest Danielle LaPorte dive deep into the intersection of spiritual fitness and emotional healing—particularly for high-achieving women navigating perimenopause, body transformation, and the pressures of achievement culture. The central theme: What does it mean to be “spiritually fit,” and how can we embrace, rather than fight, challenging emotions and experiences? Danielle shares the philosophy behind her latest book "Bless and Release," tools for transforming pain, the power of holistic ambition, and how letting go differs from giving up.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Spiritual Fitness vs. Physical Fitness

• Defining Spiritual Fitness
  • Spiritual fitness is analogous to physical fitness: it involves regular, intentional practices to “stay static-free” and connected to something greater than the ego or mind.
  • “We hear a lot about physical fitness and diet hygiene... we need spiritual hygiene.” (Danielle, 00:00)
• Not Just “Meditation on the Treadmill”
  • Actual spiritual practice requires focused intention—not just zoning out during activity.
  • “Being on the treadmill can be meditative, but we need to actually sit down... with an intention to connect to the higher realm.” (Danielle, 00:21)

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2. Letting Go, Giving Up, and the Physics of Force

• Bless and Release: The New Letting Go
  • “Letting go” through force is ineffective; what you push away becomes stronger. Real transformation comes from curiosity and compassion toward what pains us.
  • “Force creates anti force. What you push away pushes back and it gets stronger. But... what you embrace, what you're curious about... transforms.” (Danielle, 03:06)
• Letting Go vs. Giving Up
  • Letting go is intentional and conscious; giving up is resignation and often results in self-sabotage.
  • “Letting go... is intentional, that's me making a choice... Giving up: resignation, despair, giving into depression.” (Danielle, 13:39, 14:12)
  • Sometimes, quitting quickly (when something is truly wrong) is wisdom.
  • “Winners quit sooner—I'm living in a constant state of experimenting.” (Danielle, 14:45)
• Blessing Instead of Forcing Change
  • Blessing a challenge (sending it positive, compassionate attention) alchemizes it, making it less heavy and more manageable.
  • “To bless something is... my kindest gaze, focused positive intention. To curse something... is focused negative intention.” (Danielle, 44:09, 47:16)

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3. Boundaries, Cord Cutting, & Dealing With Pain

• The Downside of “Cutting Cords”
  • The contemporary trend of going “no contact” or aggressively cutting cords is often about avoidance and leaves unresolved residue.
  • “All the intention behind cutting cords is usually really aggressive... you’re still left angry... there's still an energetic hook.” (Danielle, 06:13)
• Healthy Boundaries vs. Ego Boundaries
  • Too many boundaries can be an egoic shield preventing growth and connection.
  • “Excessive boundaries are the ego's way of keeping you from what you really want.” (Danielle, 07:40)

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4. Technology and Spiritual Guidance

• Why AI Can’t Guide Your Soul
  • Spiritual direction should come from embodied human experience, not AI, even as people increasingly turn to things like ChatGPT for advice.
  • “Spiritual direction needs to come from an embodied human being with a nervous system and lived experience.” (Danielle, 08:07)

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5. Core Practices for Spiritual Fitness

• Mantras, Meditation, and Metrics
  • Regular mantra or meditation practice is akin to “reps” for the spirit; benefits and “KPI” (key performance indicators) are personal and can include improved nervous system regulation, lighter suffering, forgiveness, and connection.
  • “Every day now, I feel less anxious. Like, the metrics start to line up for you... it's different for everybody. But mostly it's to lighten up your suffering so that you can serve better.” (Danielle, 22:33)
• On Forgiveness
  • Forgiveness (of others and self) is almost universally needed—Danielle finds “10 out of 10” people surveyed are dealing with it.
  • “Forgiveness is... amazing how relevant [it] is for most people.” (Danielle, 02:01, 28:38)

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6. Embracing the Full Emotional Spectrum

• It’s Not About Eradication
  • Emotional states like fear, shame, and anger can’t simply be “let go.” Instead, they must be accepted, blessed, and integrated.
  • “Everything you think, everything you say and do lives in your electromagnetic energy field... Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed.” (Danielle, 47:16)
• How-to: Bless and Release Practice
  • Accept the present reality.
  • Focus on the heart center.
  • Visualize the emotion/challenge surrounded by a spectrum of healing colors (pinks, golds, mint, blue, lilac).
  • Imbue with positive intention or virtue.
  • Leave it—don’t ruminate further.
  • Detailed walkthrough: 49:14–54:25

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7. Reconciling High Achievement and Spiritual Alignment

• The Burnout of Achievement Culture
  • The drive to “do more” often masks a search for external validation and leaves people tired, unfulfilled, and sometimes physically unwell.
  • “How's that working out for everybody?... Look how medicated we are. Look how tired we are. Like, it's not working. This way doesn't work.” (Danielle, 55:41)
• Healing Your Relationship With Ambition
  • Reframing success to center on what is truly meant for you (rather than what culture insists) requires trust, listening, and a shift from ego to heart.
  • “We want what's best for us... To want what's meant for you, you have to trust that you live in a friendly universe.” (Danielle, 58:00)
• Manifestation Reimagined
  • Aligning goals with greater good and collective benefit makes manifestations more powerful and fulfilling.
  • “How can you include other people in [your success]?... Just take it into consideration.” (Danielle, 32:28)

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8. Transformation & Alchemizing “Low Vibrational” Emotions

• From “Crushing It” to Devotion
  • Approaching workouts, ambitions, and even negative feelings as an act of love rather than punishment is transformative and sustainable.
  • “Now it’s devotional. Dare I say it’s sensual. It’s a love letter to my body… a celebration of what I can do.” (Stephanie, 41:16)
• Intentional, Loving Focus
  • Bringing compassion to shadow emotions heightens their resonance and shifts both the experience and the outcomes.
  • “It's intentional focus. It's loving focus, that changes everything.” (Danielle, 72:00)

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9. The Balance of Masculine and Feminine Energy

• Heart Before Mind
  • True creation starts in the heart (feminine principle: receptivity, inclusiveness), then is carried out by the mind (masculine: action, structure).
  • “Ideally, it’s the heart center... inspiring you. That's the original seed. The energy starts there, and then the masculine picks it up and runs with it.” (Danielle, 76:00)
• Both Energies Are Necessary
  • Too much masculine or feminine energy alone leads to imbalance; the blend is where fulfillment and creativity are found.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Spiritual Fitness:
  “We need to make a concerted spiritual effort to connect to inner world, to the divine, whatever you want to call it.” (Danielle, 18:13)

• On Boundaries:
  “Excessive boundaries are the ego’s way of keeping you from what you really want.” (Danielle, 07:40)

• On Achieving Less by Forcing:
  “If you haven't dealt with the fear that's driving the goal, that fear is just... going to pop up to be dealt with.” (Danielle, 36:11)

• On Worthiness:
  “The ego asks if you’re worthy. The soul does not ask if you are worthy.” (Danielle, 65:26)

• On Bless and Release:
  “Everything you think, everything you say and everything you do lives in your electromagnetic energy field. Nothing goes away... The good news is, you can transform it, but you have to give it attention.” (Danielle, 47:16)

• Danielle’s Personal Vulnerability:
  “The resentment that I'm still working on is that I have to do it myself—that no one's really taking care of me... I just have to bless and release that narrative.” (Danielle, 10:34)

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Important Timestamps

• Defining Spiritual Fitness (00:00–03:53)
• Forgiveness as Universal Need (02:01–02:39, revisited at 28:38)
• The Physics of Letting Go (03:06–03:53, 13:39–15:14)
• Downsides of Cord Cutting (06:09–07:52)
• AI and Spiritual Direction (08:07–09:31)
• Bless vs. Giving Up (13:39–15:14)
• Cultivating Intuition/Staying "Static Free" (17:33–19:38)
• Spiritual Fitness Practices & Mantra Example (20:05–25:09)
• Bless and Release Process Explained (47:16–54:25)
• Integration of Ambition, Achievement, and Spirituality (55:41–60:20)
• Heart vs. Mind in Manifestation (75:09–77:42)
• Live Centering/Manifestation Practice (77:48–82:27)

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Conclusion & Takeaways

This episode invites us to “get better” not just at physical or intellectual improvement, but at cultivating deep spiritual resilience and emotional wholeness. Danielle LaPorte’s message is that loving, intentional attention—blessing, not banishing—alchemizes our fears and pain, transforms ambition from a grind to a devotional act, and aligns us with what is truly meant for us. Listeners, especially high-achieving women in perimenopause, will find actionable practices and a profound reframe for both body and soul.

“If it’s meant for me, it will come—and it will come with ease... It will be better than I could have imagined. I will be regulated, rested, enjoy. If it’s meant for me.”
— Danielle LaPorte (71:31)

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For More on Danielle LaPorte

• daniellelaporte.com/bless
• Bless and Release Book, Audio, Workshops, Facilitator Kit

Share Your Takeaway

Dr. Stephanie ends with a challenge: What one thing will you take from this conversation and apply to your life?

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Summary prepared to capture the fullest depth and spirit of the episode for those who haven't listened. For spiritual fitness, resonance, and permission to align strength with heart.

Transcript

[Danielle LaPorte]

Spiritual fitness. We hear a lot about physical fitness and diet hygiene and I don't love the phrase, but like sleep hygiene, we need spiritual hygiene. You know, I have a lot of people say, oh well, when I'm on the treadmill, that's my meditation. That's not your meditation. Meditation is an actual meditation. Being on the treadmill can be meditative, it can be therapeutic, but we need to actually sit down, move whatever it is with an intention to connect to the higher realm.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to another episode of better with Dr. Stephanie. It's me, your host, Dr. Stephanie Estima. Today's guest wrote. What we push away pushes back on us and grows stronger. And what we embrace transforms and strengthens us. Most people stay in the same loops not because they're not trying, but because they've been given the wrong instructions and the wrong instruction is force. And that kind of sounds very similar to what I talk about, even when I talk about biomechanics. Like the way that we've been taught to squat and lunge is different because women and men are not the same. It's very tangible for me to say, I'm going to go on a walk, I'm going to get 7,000 steps, I'm going to lift X amount of volume of weights this week. I understand that in terms of physical fitness, what does it mean to be spiritually fit? My guest today is Danielle laporte. And what we are going to be talking about is how we can think about all the full spectrum of emotions, whether that is joy and love and happiness and laughter, as well as resentment and rejection and shame and guilt and our core fears of maybe abandonment and how we can integrate those holistically into ourself and not try to punish or crush or get rid of these feelings that they are here for the ride. But it's how we relate to them that is important.

[Danielle LaPorte]

So If I ask 10 people right now, on a scale of 1 to 10, how, how hot is the topic of forgiveness in your life? Like it needs some attention? 10 out of 10 and it works in both directions. Is there one forgiveness conversation you need to have right now with someone to forgive them? 10 out of 10, everybody. Is there one conversation right now that you would like to have where you are the forgiven somebody lets you off the hook almost 10 out of 10. It's, it's amazing how relevant forgiveness is for most people.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

If you don't know who Danielle laporte is. She is a best selling Canadian author, motivational speaker and entrepreneur known for her blend of business strategy and spiritual self help. She is the creator of the Desire Map book as well as her latest book, Bless and Release. She's also a member of Oprah Winfrey's Super Soul 100. Laporte's teachings focus on heart centered leadership, emotional healing, and defining success on one's own terms.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Bless and Release is the new letting go, but it's also ancient. It's all really rooted in mysticism and physics. Force creates anti force. What you push away pushes back and it gets stronger. But the semicolon is what you embrace what you're curious about and compassionate with. It transforms your loving gaze, your curiosity and compassion on anything will change what you are looking at. Whether it's your fear or it's the person in front of you that you love, or that it's the person in front of you that's hard to love. Or it's like, am I going to get to the gym? Just curious. Compassionate gaze shifts the vibration becomes much more manageable, doable, lovable, less chatty, et cetera.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

I hope that you enjoyed this conversation. This will take a little bit of time, a little bit of heart opening. It is a little bit of a departure from the usual science and tech that we typically talk about, but it is a crucial part to being whole, which is not only what your v2 max is, but what is your heart rate variability, how regulated is your nervous system, and Danielle is providing a map and a framework in terms of how to achieve that. So please enjoy my conversation with Danielle laporte. You know that feeling after a brutal training week where your body is just tired and your brain won't shut off? I I've been there. That is a dysregulated nervous system and to be honest, it is absolutely sabotaging your recovery. Here's the thing that most women don't realize. Muscle is not built in the gym. It is built in recovery. And recovery is not just sleep and protein. It is your nervous system actually downshifting out of fight or flight. If that piece is not working well, nothing else is going to work. The way that it should muse is a brain sensing headband that measures your brain activity in real time. It's going to show you with actual data whether your nervous system is recovering or just spinning its wheels. No guessing, no affirmations telling you that you're calm, that you don't actually feel, just your brain's electrical activity tracked and fed back to you so that you can see what's working and what isn't. I'm a Clinician. I don't recommend things that I cannot explain mechanistically. And Muse gives your nervous system the same attention that you give your lifts. You are tracking your progressive overload. You're tracking your protein. This is tracking that third piece, your nervous system that most women completely ignore. A body that you can trust at 60, 70, 80 is built on all three pillars, not just two. Try [e-mail] better and use code better at checkout. That's choosemuse.com better and use Code better at checkout. So cutting cords and going no contact. Yay. Or nay?

[Danielle LaPorte]

Nay.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Tell me why.

[Danielle LaPorte]

My experience is that the energy, the thoughts, all the intention behind cutting cords is usually really aggressive. It's really a push away moment and you're still left angry. It's like satisfied, but still a little bit pissed off. So there's still an energetic hook. It's not clean, it's definitely not focused. Positive intention. There isn't actually a release. It's a push away, but you're still holding on.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Isn't that almost like. Well, I'm setting a boundary in as a, as a proxy for. I don't actually want to deal with this, so I'm going to cut the energetic cord or I'm going to set a boundary so that I don't actually deal with the problem.

[Danielle LaPorte]

That's it. Um, there's another layer though. There's the I don't want to actually deal with it. And that's like really the kind of nuanced psychology of this. I don't want to face my fears. I don't want to go to that level of emotional intimacy. I don't want to deal with my pain. I don't want to have to deal with family. You know, it's all like, it's, it's goopy, it's terrifying for like. So there's the. I don't want to deal with it. And then there's also the ego. The mind is always dividing. Black, white, superior, inferior, worthy, unworthy. And it makes easier emotions easier to deal with. You compartmentalize them. So if you have these excessive. So emphasize excessive.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Right.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Like boundaries. Healthy. Yes. Please respect yourself. It's part of being a grownup. Excessive boundaries are the ego's way of keeping you from what you really want.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Good. Yeah. I was just letting that land for a bit for my own personally as well. Okay. AI spiritual guru. So should we be going to an LLM for our spiritual needs? Yes or no and why not? Or why hard?

[Danielle LaPorte]

No.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

So ChatGPT is not gonna help me get heart centered.

[Danielle LaPorte]

No, no. Because spiritual direction needs to come from an embodied human being with a nervous system and lived experience. Lived experience, different lineage, sensitivity, intuition, chat, GPT, et cetera, et cetera. Doesn't know you. Doesn't know your history. Doesn't even have its own history. It's the lowest common denominator of advice siphoned from the collective encyclopedia. It's pulling people out of their own intuition and out of relationships with humans who can give advice and push back. Advice that you won't always like, but you wake up the next day and say they had something there. People are letting go of their psychotherapists and their marriage counselors because they're turning to ChatGPT. And the surveys are showing that people would much prefer to get advice from artificial intelligence because there's no pushback.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Right.

[Danielle LaPorte]

But this is relationship to be lovingly called out and. Please, no, stop, Stop. With counseling from robots.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

And same with the. The most feminine LLM I would say is Claude, and I call it Claudette because I feel like Claude is the most feminine. More feminine than Chet, but even still, Claude is not. Claudette is not your friend. I definitely marriage counselor over Claudette any day of the week. That would be my. That would be my advice as well. Yeah. Okay. Let me see here. Can we truly ever become trigger proof?

[Danielle LaPorte]

No. If you have a body and if you have a nervous system, if you have a history and a memory, you will be triggered. You have emotions. We can become significantly less triggerable, which is really the intention. And that requires some devotion and practices. But you're gonna be pissed off in perpetuity. Yeah.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Just accept it. It's never going away. All right. Resentment. Resentment is the one thing most blocking what you want. What's the resentment that you, Danielle, are still working on?

[Danielle LaPorte]

That is not what I was expecting. The resentment that I'm still working on. Oh, this is so personal. But here we are. The resentment that I'm still working on is that I have to do it myself, that no one's really taking care of me. That, you know, and this. This is like parents who got pregnant in high school. This is being an only child. This is always feeling on the outside. I mean, I basically have this perspective, this narrative that I'm the outsider all the time. I'm the outsider in our community. I'm the outsider at the party, and I just have to bless and release that narrative. And. And I may be the outsider forever, and I can be at peace with that. Yeah.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

You know, I. I actually am very surprised to hear that. I would have never thought that that would have been an issue for you. Truly. Yeah. And I can see. So, you know, as you were. I was like, oh, yeah, me too. Yeah, that's my core. That's one of my core wounds as well. It's like just being like the weird outside, the weird chiropractor who talks about joints and gets really excited by VO2 max. Because it really does excite me. Okay, if you feel yourself gripping something or gripping onto something, what's the tell?

[Danielle LaPorte]

Heart rate variability and breathing will change. So you usually feel it physically. The tell is, I'm going to change my behavior to get what I want. So when you're gripping, there's like this default to contort yourself. Oh, I want that. So I'll do this. That is the opposite of magnetism. Magnetism. Conscious creation is. I am this. I'm patience, I'm abundance, I'm wisdom. Everything in my life will match that. I will bring that in. I will find that. Whereas I gotta make this relationship work. I gotta get that gig. I gotta get that opportunity. Okay, what do I have to do? How do I have to change and perform to do that? Now, sometimes, of course, that's a healthy question. You gotta do certain things to cross finish lines. But I'm gonna be less of me to get more of that. That's the tell.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Is that kind of. And forgive my biological comparison here, is that like the sperm and the egg? Is it sort of like as an egg? Because when you look at the egg, when she's there in all her glory, she just kind of sits there and waits.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Yeah, receptivity.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Receptivity. And she waits. And then the sperm arrive, and then she picks the one she wants. Right. She's not running up and down the Fallopian tube. She's not, you know, in and out of the uterus. She's just sitting there and waiting patiently, and then the sperm come to her.

[Danielle LaPorte]

That's living. I aspire for that. That's being myself. I'm being juicy.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah.

[Danielle LaPorte]

It arrives and I go, we're a match.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah, I love that. All right. What is the difference between letting go and giving up?

[Danielle LaPorte]

That's a good one. You juice already. Well, we can get into the deeper physics, which I know we will. You actually can't let go. But let's just stay with that definition, which is like, you don't want this in your life anymore. You don't want the pain. You don't want all the pain and the Struggle associated with whatever you want to let go. You don't want that anymore because let's just call it that. That is conscious, that is intentional. That's me making a choice that is best for me. That is me coming from my strength. Giving up. Resignation, despair, giving into the depression can be a little bit of victim, can be leaving before the breakthrough. Giving up can be self sabotage. Now there's a flip. I'm going to use the same language to flip that. It's like one of my favorite teachings from Seth Godin is that winners quit sooner, right? So I love giving up soon. Like I'm living in a constant state of experimenting. That's not working. I have enough signs, I've got enough information done. Yep, didn't do that very long. Don't need to keep doing it. That is, that's an intentional letting go. I've, I've taken all the data in. I'm doing the thing that's best for my nervous system, my business, the relationship, my growth. Intentional versus I'm resigned. I don't feel worth it. I don't have enough faith in my bucket. Just going to give up.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Is that forged, do you think, through experience? I mean you've been, you are such, you know, I hesitate to use the word guru, but you're so well lived, let's say in your business and knowing what works for your business and what doesn't, and at this stage in your life, knowing what works for you in terms of relationships and what doesn't, do you feel like that comes with experience?

[Danielle LaPorte]

I think you forward your intuition so you don't have to have 10 years of experience of success and failure and launching and retreating. It's not a time thing, it's a consciousness thing. Like if I'm doing my work and I'm keeping my mind clear, I'm doing my practices to keep my vehicle static free, then I am going to make better judgment calls. My, my intuition is sharper. My discernment is like stellar. So I don't need as many repeated lessons. I don't need the like two by four lessons. I don't need shock. I just need a handshake that didn't feel quite right. I need an email that's like, oof, that tone was a little bit off. I'm going to pay attention. I'm paying attention. I'm being more conscious. And most of us are separate. We're living outside of our bodies, we're living outside of our hearts, our intuition. Like we don't have, we haven't Built the strongest possible access to our higher self. We're not being still frequently enough in order to hear things clearly enough that we need to keep repeating. And we're like, oh, I'm developing the muscle. Oh, it took me 10 years not to learn who to say yes to and who to say no to. It took me 10 years to learn how to listen to higher guidance. But it could have taken me just two with the right practices, or I could have been born a little more gifted, could have been born with a little more inner silence and acuity. But most of us school hard knocks. Yeah, right.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Intuition is, is interesting because I have often found that when I have in, it's always hindsight is 20 20, right. When you look back, you're like, I knew it. I had that bad feeling. I should have listened to that little whisper that was happening. And I think that there's something to be said. I think men and women obviously have a certain intuition and a certain prowess. We'll say, but I think that that can, that skill can be really honed in for women. So how can we tap into that? How can we, you know, you use this, you know, staying static free, which I really like that expression. How can we remove the interference, let's say, so that we can tap into that intuition a little bit more clearly and more often.

[Danielle LaPorte]

It's spiritual fitness. It's the same thing. You know, we, we hear a lot about physical fitness and diet hygiene and I don't love the phrase, but like sleep hygiene, we need spiritual hygiene. And you know, it's like just to like speak into your space around fitness and wellness. You know, I have a lot of people say, oh, well, when I'm on the treadmill, that's my meditation. That's not your meditation. Meditation is an actual meditation. Being on the treadmill can be meditative, it can be therapeutic, but we need to actually sit down, move whatever it is with an intention to connect to the higher realm. We need to make a concerted spiritual. I'm using the word spiritual effort to connect to inner world out the divine, whatever you want to call it. So just like you take care of your body, you need to take care of your spirit, you need to take care of, you need to really do the energy work. We do the physical work, we do the mental work, but we don't often enough see like the spiritual work, the actual energetic working on the energetic realm.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Let's dive into that a little bit because as somebody who is very tangible, for me to say, I'm going to go On a walk, I'm going to get 7,000 steps. I'm going to, I'm going to lift X amount of volume of weights this week. I understand that in terms of physical fitness, this is going to be for my exorcist. Emily is the Betties that are, you know, super intense, but maybe they're missing a couple of pieces in terms of making the whole thing come together. What does it mean to be spiritually fit?

[Danielle LaPorte]

Can I talk about how to get spiritually fit first?

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yes, yes.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Okay.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yes.

[Danielle LaPorte]

The same way you have a framework, you have metrics, you want to work on your skills. So you're really kind of going at it like it's a project and eventually all the constructs of the project fall away. Just like you stop counting calories and you go to the gym, you know, you're not checking it off every day you go to the gym, you're going to not count as many things. But there's a reason. So I'll give you a story. So I go to one of my first Buddhist retreats. It's very short. It's like a small day, small three day intensive thing. I'm given a mantra just happened to be called. It's the Heart Sutra, Prajna Paramita mantra. And I go to the lama, he's a lama, Mark from Toronto. And I say, I want to practice with you. It's not the same as being a devotee. That's not my path this lifetime. But I want to practice, I want to learn from you, I want to be a student in this. And he says, okay, well, you have to commit to coming on a three week silent retreat with me. I said, okay, done. I'm a householder, I have a kid. So I don't know when that will happen, but I'm in in the next couple years. And he said, and here's. Do the Prajna Paramita Sutra 30,000 times. I'm just like, you gotta be kidding me. 30,000 times. You know, And I talked to, I talked to a Buddhist friend who's like, she's taken her vows and she's, oh, you can bang those out in no time. And I thought that was like so interesting, like banging out the mantras. Is that the point? Is this like another regime? Little bit.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

And a mantra just for someone who's listening. A mantra is a sound or a sentence that you're saying over and over again.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Yes.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Okay.

[Danielle LaPorte]

It's a sacred word set. It's, you could say it's prayerful. The syllables really matter. What I love about most mantras is the classical mantras have been said infinite amount of times by monks throughout centuries. Like it's so imbibed. Yeah, I just, Yeah, I find it really exciting and moving.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

So you punch out 30,000 of these mantras and what is the. And just forgive my mechanics of mine. Yeah. What's the KPI we're going for here? Like, I forgive my mechanics. Yeah. Tell me how, tell me how we. What are we measuring?

[Danielle LaPorte]

The KPI is up to you, the result. This is why I answer first how you do spiritual fitness. And the result is. It depends. It depends on your culture and your trauma and your lineage and your karma. What do you need to get? So one, the KPI is you get to say you did it. And that could be ego, that could also be heart. That could be really healthy pride. There's being a part of a community. There's. For me, it's part of showing up devotionally and letting know, letting my unseen forces, my guides, my angels, my God, my higher self, multiple names know that I'm committed. I'm in a relationship with the higher forces. I'm, I'm, I'm showing up. I'm there to ask for my suffering to be lightened up. I'm there to ask to lose the last ten pounds. I'm there for abundance and partnership, all those things. I'm going to show up and I'm going to do the work. Give me the answers, open the doors. There's that also when you do something in any kind of reciting form, when you do in the reps, you see different things every time. Why that didn't occur to me? Like the prajna paramitra sutta om gata gati parasam gati bodhi svah. I'm praying to the divine mother for beauty. Open me up. I want to go beyond the beyond. That's the essence of that mantra. Take me beyond the beyond. Take me beyond the mind. Take me beyond my ego. Take me beyond thinking. You show up with your little mala beads as 108 beads on one mala. You do a round of that every morning. You do 10 rounds. You count them. You actually, you know, I write them in my little book. Aren't I great? And the next day I'm just like, oh, my heart's really closed. Oh, you know, I'm getting into this and like, this is really starting to bring up fear and tears. Oh, this is really starting to help me feel connected. I feel so feminine. I feel. Wow. I'm having better ideas. Every day now, I feel less anxious. Like the metrics start to line up for you. Yeah. And it's different. I think it's different for everybody. But mostly it's to lighten up your suffering so that you can serve better, serve the collective. And you're part of that collective. Yeah.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

I love this example. Skin aging isn't really about wrinkles. Wrinkles are just a symptom. What's actually declining is your skin quality. So the cellular energy that you have, the hydration, retention, barrier integrity, and the tissue's ability to repair itself after stress. Here's the mechanism. NAD levels drop with age. When cellular energy drops because you have low nad, your skin cells lose their ability to repair themselves, renew, and to maintain structural organization. This is when you start losing firmness and texture. Not just because the you're getting older and time is passing, but because of the specific biological processes that cannot be addressed. The youth serum and youth moisturizer from Young Goose are formulated to support those NAD dependent cellular pathways in your skin. So when you restore that cellular energy availability now your skin cells are able to do their job, so they're able to repair and renew and to improve the structural integrity of the skin. Your firmness will improve, the texture of your skin will improve, not just because you've temporarily plump, but because the tissue itself is functioning better. That's what I mean when I say skin quality skin care. This is not just like topical theater and glass skin temporarily. This is working at the level of the cell. I use these daily and my skin has never looked better. Head over to doctorsephaniestima.com forward/young goose and use code better for 10% off your first purchase. That's doctorstephanestima.com forward slash young goose. All right, here's something that I say in my upcoming book, and I'll say it again here. Your skin is not a vanity project. It is a signal. When collagen production drops, and after 40, it drops about 1% every year, your skin is the first place that you're going to see it. So the firmness goes, the texture changes. And no amount of surgery is going to fix what's happening at, at the cellular level. But red light therapy can, because it works differently. It penetrates below the surface and stimulates your own collagen synthesis from the inside out. That is called photobiomodulation. This is just a big word that means your mitochondria are responding to specific wavelengths of light and they are going to produce more energy. And that energy goes towards Repairing your skin. I love the Bon Charge face mask and the face wand. This is how I do this at home. It is clinical grade red and the wand is compact enough to travel with and at a price point that doesn't require a second mortgage. And I want you to have your best skin ever. So head over to boncharge.com forward/better. That's boncharge.com forward/b, e, t, T E R. That's the name of this podcast and use that discount code at checkout. And that's going to give you 15 off your entire order. When you work with people, what are some examples of metrics or things that people are trying to heal or solve? Or I don't know if manifest is the right word, but what are common examples of things that people are seeking when they might engage in a, in a mantra practice like this big topic is forgiving.

[Danielle LaPorte]

So If I ask 10 people right now, on a scale of 1 to 10, how, how hot is the topic of forgiveness in your life? Like it needs some attention? 10 out of 10 and it works in both directions. 10 people, is there one forgiveness conversation you need to have right now with someone to forgive them? 10 out of 10, everybody, is there one conversation right now that you would like to have where you are the forgiven somebody lets you off the hook? Almost 10 out of 10. It's amazing how relevant forgiveness is for most people. Like, I am in the process of creating some kind of, we could say, spiritual fitness metric, an onboarding system where people are measuring everything from nervous system regulation and are you sleeping through the night? To forgiveness conversations. On a scale of one to whatever to how close do you feel to your higher guidance system, the energetics. We don't measure how. On a scale of 1 to 10, how anxious are you on Sunday nights? Okay, let's do some practices in a consistent way. Whatever one fits for you. Practices are not one size fits all, whether it's a breathing exercise or it's a mantra. Like this is. I'm very heartened by everything that's happening in the female wellness space where, you know, you and some other key teachers finally talking about like all these tests and research that's been done in terms of cold plunging and sauna. They were done on men.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah.

[Danielle LaPorte]

So it's just like we're finding out that sauna is more ideal for a female body versus cold plunging. There are mantras and breathing practices and prayers and meditations that are better suited to different people because some people are more heart centered, some people are more gut Driven. Some people are more mental. I've learned over all the years of teaching meditation. Some people. This is called aphantasia. They do not see visuals when they close their eyes. So you can say, close your eyes and visualize this color, see this scene, see your future. They don't. And I'm not saying they. This is an affliction. I actually have a theory that those people might be closer to their version of the divine because they're just seeing space. It's just emptiness. Could be great, but not one size fits all for practices.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

And how do you know if you're gut driven or heart driven? How can you identify that? And then I love the idea of maybe there's mantras or breathing practices or other verticals in spiritual fitness that might be more appropriate for some of the women and maybe the collective experience that many women experience together. What are some ways that we can identify heart? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Just. Just ask your partner. Just ask someone who loves you. They're gonna say, oh, my God, you are so gooey. You are so heart, and you're in your head all the time. You always have the right word for everything. You like a plan. Gut is like drive little more on the assertive side, like that fiery personality. You. You know. Yeah. Or you can do all the. You can do the Enneagram, you can do the Myers Briggs. You can. It will tell you.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah, okay, cool. Okay. So we have spiritual fitness mantras and breathing. What other things can we think about that? That sort of. That tick off the spiritual fitness regimen,

[Danielle LaPorte]

your goal setting, and do your goals include the benefit of others? And it's actually pretty easy to do if you just stop and think about it. So through a Buddhist perspective, you would say, what is the potential harm or the potential benefit of my success? It's pretty simple. And then when you get into visualizing, you know, you're gonna see yourself winning the medal. You're gonna see yourself on the number one podcast. You're gonna see yourself at the altar with the ring being put on your finger. Like, whatever your vignette of success is, how can you include other people in that? It's just like, it's the donations you're gonna make. It's the happiness. It's the. You're more regulated and more fun to be around. So you're gonna be a better things. But just like, take it into consideration. I mean, this is my thing with manifestation culture and vision boarding. Both are great. I mean, I'm teaching about manifestation culture, the dark side and the light side of it, but too often it doesn't include anybody else. And we have, we have a world that's being ground down by greed. We are hyper materialistic someone. We just gotta keep saying it's too much stuff. It's too much stuff. It's taking us away from what we want the most, which is love and great sex and deep connection and being great parents and being with our animal, you know, like all the things, the chasing to get the stuff, it's killing the ecosystem, it's killing our bodies. And I think if we just step in to just insert like inclusiveness, a bigger perspective into our goals, we actually can have it all. You still want all the things. Want all the things you still want to be whatever it is. Everybody wants to be a billionaire now.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

I think sometimes the pain that we experience can be our greatest teachers. Obviously in the moment it can be really hard to hold. It can really, it can be really hard to sit in it because it feels so. The best way that I can describe it is it just feels like the ocean is opening you up, it's going to swallow you and then you're not going to know which way is up, down, left, right. It's like the crocodile roll, you know, like the death roll. You're just not going to know what to do and how to. And how to survive it. So I think what a lot of people do is they just put it in a compartment somewhere and forget about it or compensate. One of the things that I like that you talk about in, in your new book, Bless and Release is that you can't actually, every time that you get angry, that your anger just pushes back on you. It's not like you can just put it away and forget about it. It's still there. It's just waiting for you to pay attention to it. So I would love for you to speak a little bit more about that physics.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Force creates anti force. So what you push away not only pushes back, but it gets stronger. And psychology gone wrong, motivational self help culture gone wrong has been teaching us to push away. To overcome your fear. Overcome your fear, which is really just suppression. And what I've seen actually with a lot of people in this space is hustle. Culture is a way of overcoming your fear. I'm gonna crush it. I'm gonna do it.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Danielle LaPorte]

And the fear that you're overcoming by being an overachiever because you can still get all the things, you can still pull it off. But if you haven't dealt with the fear that's driving the goal that fear is just, it's going to come out somewhere else. It's going to pop up to be dealt with. So it pops up in anxiety. I mean, if you gave me a minute, I could probably think of a dozen people in our space who tell the same story. I'm on stage, I'm crushing it. I'm driving the Lambo, I'm doing the whatever and I can't sleep at night and I'm on anxiety meds and I went and had an affair and sabotaged my marriage or life, gave me some kind of blind siding thing. She left me, he left whatever it is to get me to wake up and look at what was driving it. And usually it's something like, look at my relationship with my parents, look at my unhealed, my trauma stuff, look at the bullying stuff. And then you can go deeper and meta of like, you know, this is stuff I've been carrying for lifetimes. Maybe there's nothing in this life attached to it. But I've just. I've just come in with this theme of abandonment, neglect, rejection, whatever, and I haven't faced it. And I've been overachieving and overworking or underworking or just, just really just being lazy and not successful to not deal with all the fear stuff underneath.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

So what do we do? What do we do then?

[Danielle LaPorte]

Face it, love it, give it compassion, give it curiosity. Stop talking down to it, stop criticizing it, stop asking it to change. And I know it said just sounds bonkers and ironic, but I don't want to be afraid. I want to be fearless. Yes, but your fear is there. Don't ask your fear to be courageous. You will have doubts. Don't ask your doubt to be full faith. It's like if I showed up with you and I was a hot mess, you'd just be like, d. Just come on in and be a hot mess. I got you.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Because you are. Love your friendship. That's what we do. As is. You create all of your emotional experiences, your fear, your neuroses, your rejection, all that stuff that you want to push away and you want to overcome and get rid of. You created it. You have to be curious and compassionate with it. So now my way is if I'm afraid, I just listen to my fear. Come, come, tell me, tell me. Okay, let's. Let's talk it through now. Because I'm so, like holistically oriented. I used to think if I even looked at my fear, if I talked about it, if I verbalized it, I was going to Manifest it. If I talked about. I don't want to bomb when I'm on stage, if I would have spoken that out loud, I would have created that scenario. If I would have talked about fears of some scandal or I would have created some kind of cancel thing. So I didn't even talk about it. I just would just like, I'm just gonna keep it positive, you know, And I don't do that anymore. Just like, let's talk about it. I see it. I bring my consciousness to it. It doesn't control me anymore. It's not in my front seat. It's in my back seat. Heard you. See you. Okay, you're afraid of that. Okay, well, I'm gonna just offer that up. I'm gonna, you know, my whole practice, my centering practice, I'm gonna bless and release this. My fear relaxes. Way less controlling and chatty, and I become invincible because I just was more conscious, loving, intentional. This radical responsibility for your emotional state, it works. It's actually love.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

It's. It's interesting because I think that that's how my relationship with lifting weights has evolved too. Like, I used to do the same thing. I'm gonna crush it. I'm gonna punish my legs. It's gon. It's going to be a hell of a workout. And now it's devotional. It's. Dare I say, it's sensual. It's a love letter to my body, and it's a celebration of what I can do and what I'm trying to continue to achieve. And I think that as I'm listening to you talk about it, I think that that's also. There's something there rather than trying to crush it. And the hustle culture and all of that that you just described, just sitting with it and seeing if we can. I don't know if alchemize is the right word, but like, alchemize, the energy from this sort of punitive, destructive, darker energy, we'll say to something that's a little bit more nourishing.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Listening alchemizes things, and you learn to listen. So all the not listening and overcoming created results and effects you didn't want. And you go, I better. I better listen. Now you're listening to your body. You're listening to your whole life. You're listening to, like, the ecosystem of you. And some days it wants this, and it looks like crushing it, and some days it wants something else, and it just looks like sensual. Some days you don't go. Some days you go, yeah, but that Requires consciousness, presence, you know, like we don't respond to our kids the same way every time they show up with a problem. Some days it's a hug, some days it's like, gotta get it done, dude.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yep.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Sleep shouldn't be a project that you manage, but for a lot of us, especially in perimenopause and beyond, it kind of is. And so I've been building a nighttime wind down ritual with AGZ. This is a melatonin free drink from AG1 and that melatonin free part really matters because melatonin is a hormone and you don't want to be casually supplementing with a hormone long term. AGZ works differently. It supports the conditions that your body needs to actually produce a restful sleep on its own. So inside you have magnesium L Threonate, which is the form of magnesium that actually crosses the blood brain barrier and gets into the brain to calm it down. You have saffron L theanine, ashwagandha tart, cherry juice and valerian. It's clinically studied, NSF certified for sport, which means it's third party tested for quality and safety. And that is really important to me flavor wise. My favorite as always, is the chocolate. But you also have chocolate mint and mixed berry. I typically warm up the chocolate like a nighttime hot cocoa. I like it with hot water, so it's kind of like cocoa with benefits. It's my, it's my chef's kiss in the evening. Pair it with your AG1 in the morning and now you've got a bookend system. You have nutrition and sleep covered without adding any complexity to your day at all. Head over to drinkag1.com Stephanie for a free frother with your first purchase. That's drinkag1.com forward slash. Stephanie, in your book you open up with this, this idea and we've been building up towards it that you can't actually let anything go. So you have anger, you have past experiences, you can't just release it. So that's literally the opposite of every single message out there. So talk, talk us through what you mean by that.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Bless and release is the new letting go. But it's also ancient. So it's all really rooted in mysticism and physics. Force creates anti force. What you push away pushes back and it gets stronger. But the semicolon is what you embrace what you're curious about and compassionate with. It transforms your, your loving gaze, your curiosity and compassion on anything will change what you are looking at, whether it's your fear or it's the person in front of you that you love or that it's the person in front of you that's hard to love. Or it's like, am I going to get to the gym? Just curious. Compassionate gaze shifts. The vibration becomes much more manageable, doable, lovable, less chatty, et cetera. So the power move is not about annihilation. It's about focused, positive intention, which is really the long definition of a blessing. To bless something is. I'm giving it my. My kindest gaze, focus, positive intention. To curse something, to invalidate something is focus, negative intention. And we do it all the time. We do it with our thoughts, we do it with world events. We do it with, you know, we do it with a timeline. I'm just gonna think about all the things that can go wrong. I'm gonna think about all the reasons I don't deserve this, all the reasons I should quit, all the reason this sucks. And you're just giving it negative attention. And it's growing, it's becoming. It's like how I often describe this is, you know, your thoughts are like little spheres of energy. Those spheres are magnetic. You want to grow those little tiny marbles of energy into bigger formations or not. Do you want a bigger energy ball? You could say energy mass of gratitude and abundance and prosperity and faith and loving kindness. Yes. Yes, you do. I'll just give you the answer. Yes, you do. Because that magnetizes. That's your. That's your sign. That's your. That's your traffic light is bringing more of that. Or do you want to grow your misery, your lack thinking, your fear, which is all natural, but do you want to grow it? No, you want to love it so it gets lighter. So the release in bless and release. So bless is focus, positive intention. The question around release is, where does it go? So, you know, since I've been having. Since bless and release is out, a lot of women are just like, I'm going to bless and release that chunk. I'm just like, that's not how it works. And you get the point.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

That's code for boundary. That's the new thing that you're saying.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Let's rewind. Yeah, the release is I'm gonna bless my pain. I'm gonna give my pain some loving attention, some curiosity and compassion. Yeah, I'm gonna bless that bullshit dynamic with that person, which is the reason I'm getting out of that situation. I'm going to bless the debt. I'm going to bless the anxiety. And by doing that, I'm lightening it up. It's becoming less heavy, it's becoming less staticky and dense. It's becoming less negative and it can flow more energy circulates. I'm sending it back into my energy field. Everything. This is really, I mean, this is the takeaway. Everything you think, everything you say and everything you do lives in your electromagnetic energy field. Nothing goes away. You cannot annihilate anything. This is the pure physics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed. So if I can't destroy that memory, the thing that happened, the anxiety I want to let go of, I can't banish it. What do I have to do with it? Well, the good news is you can transform it, but you have to give it attention. You have to give it positive attention. You can't yell at it, you can't try and hack it or you're going to be in trouble.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

So what do. When we want to bless, when we want to have focused positive intention towards the debt, the pain, the divorce, the insert bad thing here. How does, tell me how that looks like in practice. Am I sitting somewhere comfortable, hand on my belly, hand on my heart? Like, how do I give, how do I send positive intention to something that is so painful for me to sit with in the first place?

[Danielle LaPorte]

Well, level one is psychological. It's an essential energetic as well. But you just, you have to practice acceptance. This is happening. I'm not resisting what's happening. Let's look at what's happening. So there's a willingness there and then you work with it on an energetic level. This is the centering practice. So the teaching here is you get clear. Are you here to heal something or to create something? But right now we're talking about all the stuff we want to get rid of. So I'm here to heal something that's heavy. I want to lighten up my suffering. So the teaching is that the practice and you can do this in 30 seconds, or you could do it 21 minutes seated, deep meditation. You can do it while you're making dinner. You can do it before you're falling asleep. You can do it on your walk, doesn't matter. You take a few breaths with your hand on your heart. We all know heart rate variability, regulate your nervous system, super basic. Then you think a positive thought or you think of a positive energy. I love love. I love generosity. I love swimming in the ocean in Vancouver in the summer. I love my kids. I love flowers, whatever it is. And the reason we're doing that is we get the mind to relax. So we're getting the ego out of fear. Just a little bit of pleasure dopamine for a nanosecond. And then you're gonna work with your heart center. So you're gonna see whatever you've been wanting to push away. You see it as a scene, as a vignette. You see it as a word. I'm a very visual person, so I see, like a word. I'll just see, like, guilt written in my heart center. There's lots of teachings in terms of science and mysticism that talk about the heart center. The heart chakra being the place where energy moves the quickest and the strongest. That the electromagnetic field that comes off of the heart is 60 times stronger than what can be measured off the brain. Just bring it into your heart. All. All meditative mystics teach that you can sit, you can watch your breath, you can do all the thought games, but eventually you have to get to the heart center. So that's why we work with the heart. So you've brought whatever you're bringing into your heart. And as a scene, I walk you through some colors. You're going to see some gold light. But then we work with the full light spectrum. So the quickest way to this is just like. Just see your heart center lit up with the full spectrum with rainbow colors, light pinks and peaches and golds and minty greens and sky blues and lilacs. Whatever you've brought into your heart for healing is basking in those frequencies. There's also lots of science around the different effects of particular colors. Every color is vibrating at a different frequency. This is all measurable. Red has a much slower frequency than gold or indigo. But we work with the full spectrum. Esoterically speaking, we would say every color has a healing code to it. So just work with all the colors, and you can do that for a minute. Whatever you brought into the center of your heart is just basking in all this light. Take a few breaths. You could bring in a virtue like I want. I want to bring in generosity. I want to bake in some forgiveness. I want to pour on some love. A couple breaths and that's done. And that took you 90 seconds, or it took you 10 minutes in the park. You're crying, you're laughing. And the most important. The second most important part of the practice is you leave it. Don't go. Think about you brought in your divorce moment or you brought in what your bank account says you brought in that moment. You're working on that moment of rejection. And humiliation. Don't think about how it could have been better. You just worked on an energetic level. We worked beyond the psyche, beyond the beyond. Leave it, get on with your day.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

And what is the significance of thinking about all the colors? So you mentioned that they all have different frequencies. But what if you, if you're landing on a peachy color, for example, or a gold color, how is that different than a red?

[Danielle LaPorte]

Well, you could, if you're called to, you could work with specific colors. Like if your impulse, your intuition is just like, oh, I just feel like I need golds right now, I'm just gonna pour it on. Just work with that. Just be guided. The significant significance of working with the full spectrum is it's like holistic on top of holistic. It's, you're bound to get the vibration, the healing code that you need from that range of color. Maybe you need a little more pink, which is really about the divine feminine. Maybe you need a little more gold, which is really about discernment and forgiveness. Maybe you need a little more indigo, which is about purification and resilience. But if you just work with them all rainbow it up. You covered your bases.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah. So if I'm hearing you correctly, what I'm, what you're asking us, you're inviting us to think about is being a bit more receptive to the holistic or the whole spectrum of emotions versus just I'm only going to be, only going to be happy. And that's it. That's the only one that I'm getting for where I'm headed with this is I think that a lot of high achieving women have been told their whole lives to push harder. Right. Somehow you have to achieve more, you have to be more smart, you have to have more money in your bank account, you have to have, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, more babies.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Now, now we're back to more babies,

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

more babies and all of that. So how can we reconcile the high achieving woman who I still definitely am? Because if you are not forcing something, it almost feels like if you're not chasing something or pushing that big boulder up the hill, it can almost sound like permission, like to give up. Like why even, like, you know, so how can we, how can we reconcile that for someone who has immediate baked probably in their cells, that achievement and the to do list and success. These are, these are my, this is who I am. Like I don't know who I am without these things.

[Danielle LaPorte]

How's that working out for everybody?

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

How's your, how's Your autoimmune disease and your anxiety medication and all the things, right? Yep, yep. Yeah.

[Danielle LaPorte]

How'd menopause go for you?

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Danielle LaPorte]

What number marriage are we on? Are your kids in therapy? Are your kids absorbing your anxiety and. Mm. I mean, how healthy are we? Look at. Look at how medicated we on. We. We are. Look how tired we are. Like, it's not working this way. Doesn't work. There are times to push. You cannot have birth, labor launches, finish lines without a push. But it cannot be all push or we age prematurely. I mean. I mean, this is your. This is your field. Like, so much conversation now around perimenopause, menopause, hormones in general, conversations we have to have. This should be. This should be woven into the education system. We should be learning about this in elementary school, and we're having to talk about it because we're in crisis, because we override our intuition, because we're not looking to our higher guidance systems, because we're not listening. We're not listening. Perimenopause should not be that hard. If we've been living a balanced life, menopause should not be that hard. Now we have. We have another whole situation to combat, which is there's our personal stress levels, and then there's everything that we're ingesting. The microplastics, et cetera, et cetera. And in terms of ingesting, I look at things holistically. So there's the messaging and there's the music and there's the ideologies, and there's. I mean, I just sat down last night with my. With my friend, and because I love him so much, and it's Pride Month, I was like, okay, I'll do the Madonna marathon with you. And everything is so dark.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah, we're just social media, too. I mean, social media is sometimes it's the best thing, right? It connects people, but sometimes it is the one worst neighborhood on the planet. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Diets of light and dark. Light and dark. Like, we got to get more light into our. Our diet. So back to the lead question about the ambitious woman. This is. This is not counterintuitive, what I'm suggesting, but it's counterculture for sure. And culture is like 10 to 20 year segments. Like, we'll grow out of this. We'll evolve out of this. Where I think we're headed in the right direction. I think all the crises, from autoimmune disease to politics to not clean drinking water, I mean, it's all driving us to Wake up. So we're going to get there, we're going to get more loving and attentive and balanced. Yeah. I mean, this brings us actually to my favorite part about this, this ecosystem of bless and release. I mean, one part is about healing and healing. Your relationship to ambition is the ultimate I am positing, is that we want what's best for us. And nobody's talking about that. And this isn't about me being a baller. Cause I'm talking about this. But it's like I wish somebody would have talked about this way sooner in my life. And now that I'm on this trajectory of wanting what's meant for me, I mean, I understand, I understand the fear behind that. I experience a lot of fear. I think I've been in that fear for many, many years, probably most of my life around, not even daring to just want what's meant for me. That, you know, to want what's meant for you, you have to trust that you live in a friendly universe. You have to trust that you are capable. It requires a lot of trust. And we're not, we're not schooled that way. We're not schooled to trust. We're schooled to push.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Recovery is not the reward for hard training. It's actually where the adaptation from your exercise happens. Skip it and you're just accumulating fatigue and damage. I use rapid reboot compression boots after hard sessions, especially after leg day. And at this point, so do my sons. They play competitive soccer multiple times a week. They come home, plug it in and let the compression do its thing and the result is less soreness, fresher legs so you can get back at it the next day. I didn't have to sell them on it either. The results sold themselves. So here's what's happening. Physiologically. When you put on rapid reboot compression boots, you have dynamic compression which flushes metabolic waste. It's going to improve circulation, supports lymphatic drainage and reduces muscle fatigue that builds up between exercise sessions. This is the same clinical grade technology that is used by professional athletes. So it's no longer just gated for the pros, it's available to all of us. Whether you are training for yourself or you're running a household of aspiring athletes like I am, this earns its square footage. Head over to doctors Stephanie estima.com forward/rapid reboot and use code Dr. Stephanie for 10% off. So how is wanting what's meant for you different than want more? Dream Baker.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Like what?

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

How do we. How do we tell the difference between a desire that's truly ours and meant for us versus something that we've absorbed from culture?

[Danielle LaPorte]

Ego driven goal setting versus what I would call heart centered goal setting or conscious creation. Ego is. There's always approving. It's never good enough when you get there. You're probably fried when you get there. And you may crush the goal. You may get what you want. My experience is I've set up ego centered goals, crushed it. I give myself zero time to celebrate and I'm just on to the next thing.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Good grief.

[Danielle LaPorte]

There's no party.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah, I know something about that that feels very familiar.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Unfortunately, there's no rest. There's actually not a lot of joy when you get there. And if you really look under the hood, you'll often find that there's some criticism around the goal. Like, I crossed the finish line. I got this thing. I should have aimed higher. I could have done more. We could have had a bigger launch. Now everybody's talking about how much money they make on their launches. That is only relevant, by the way, for people who are in the business of helping other people launch things within their business community. For the rest of us who are in spiritual direction and wellness and medicine. I mean, this is just me being super preacher here about this, but it's like, it is inappropriate, I think, to be talking about how much you're making on your launches. Anyway. That was just my side rant on that. Like, stick to why you are serving people. This is, this is part of hyper materialism culture.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Wanting what's meant for you is. You have to listen. For myself, it requires a lot of courage. I just have to be willing to kind of go with some flow here to see what's showing up, to be more open, to focus on qualities I want to embody. Like, I want a peaceful, loving, passionate, abundant life. I can get all that. I can magnetize all I can be all that. But it might show up differently. And we all have that experience. All of us. Like, none of us are where we thought we were going to be. No, like, you can't. You can't live past 34 and have the experience of like. Well, that did not turn out how I expected. It was way worse. Did not see that coming. And it was way better.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Oh my God, I'm so glad I failed because this is amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Okay, so question. A question about worthiness then. You surveyed thousands of people and found the number one thing that women want to let go of is exhaustion from trying to Be worthy. Why do you think that that came up first?

[Danielle LaPorte]

Yeah. 8,000 people, mostly female. It's the. What's your Betty archetype?

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Exorcist Emily. My Exorcist Emily's. Yeah, yeah.

[Danielle LaPorte]

This is how Exorcist Emily would answer all the things. I want to have the big launch. I want to have the bigger butt, the smaller butt, lighter skin, darker skin. I mean, just.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just pick a new longer hair, shorter hair. Yeah, yeah.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Pick a metric.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah.

[Danielle LaPorte]

So that I can get the love I want externally to prove that I'm lovable.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Good God. Yeah.

[Danielle LaPorte]

This has been going on for thousands of years. This is the human cycle. This is nothing new. It's just. This is what it looks like on TikTok now. And it's the ego that asks if you're worthy. The soul does not ask if you are worthy. If your kids came to you, if your boys came to you and said, am I worthy of your love? You would just think, silly rabbit.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah, exactly. Yes.

[Danielle LaPorte]

You don't even have to ask beyond worthy, Silly question. Spaciousness, soulfulness, love, Unconditionality. Doesn't even ask the question. The ego is asking that question with every choice, every swipe, everything you buy. I know every female listening to this right now. We have all bought something, let's say at least within the last year, that we thought was going to change our lives. A thing like that pair of jeans, the barrel cut, the purse. We see ourselves walking into the room with the purse with the logo, with the belt, with the Gucci, the two GS. And it's going to tell people a lot about us. And it's getting pathetic because all it is telling us now is that you had enough room on your credit card to buy the thing. It doesn't even. Those external trappings aren't saying much anymore because we all been chasing them to try and just be held really, at the end of the day. Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

I just. I just want to let that land a little bit because I think that the, you know, the Exorcist Emily archetype, first of all, I've talked about this publicly. It'll be in the book as well. I spent probably a decade there, you know, it was like after my divorce, trying to, like, I was like grief and rage and things that I hadn't fully processed yet. So I, I really want to make sure that we're talking. There's a lot of my Exorcist Emily's that listen to this are like, I have no problem getting to the gym. I have no problem working out, but I don't have what I want. And why is that? And they're frustrated because they have these old habits, like their software hasn't been updated. You know, it's like there's a. There's a software, there's.

[Danielle LaPorte]

There's a.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

A pattern that you were running that at one time maybe worked for you in that season, but no longer works for you for where you are now. And we just have to update the hardware, you know, in the same way or the software in the same way that your iOS thing, you know, shows up. And it's like, you have to update this overnight. It's going to update over. And you're like, yes, of course I want the newest thing. We don't. We don't do the same software upgrades for ourself. And we wonder why we're running the same game plan and we're not winning.

[Danielle LaPorte]

So whatever is chasing Emily, Emily needs a minute to just figure out what's driving her. Yeah, let's just say it's the fear of rejection. I'm going. I don't have a problem showing up at the gym every day because I'm. I'm working on the ass. And that's going to prevent me from. That's going to get me what I want in a romantic partnership. So I won't be rejected. Ultimately, it's so I won't be rejected. So Emily has this. Aha. So then, in bless and release paradigm, what do you do next? You bless your fear of rejection. You don't try and stop being afraid of being rejected. You get really compassionate and loving with the part of yourself that is terrified of being rejected in whatever form that comes in, and it starts to soften and you actually get more powerful. And as you're. It's almost like I want to create, like, a graphic, a visual of this as you bringing in those parts of yourself. Here's my fear of rejection, part of myself. Here's my fear of never belonging. Here's my fear of not being able to pay the rent. I'm bringing all that in. I'm loving it. I love you. I see you. You can relax. Just relax. I've got you. I'm doing the energetic work. Great, great, great. You're expanding. That's like food for consciousness. That's like. That is spiritual vitamins. Resilience. Bring it in, bring it in, bring it in. You're getting bigger. You're getting bigger. You start thinking more clearly. You start becoming more loving. You go to the gym for different reasons. You stop going to the gym. You love that you're single. You also love your desires. You love that you don't want to be single forever. But you're loving it right now. You can hold your present day and all your fears and your rejection and you can hold. You are brilliant and you are hot and you want to launch. Like a friend said to me the other day, I said, you know, I'm just really like in acceptance mode of so much. And she said, yeah, you don't need that trappings you used to want. I was like, no, I still want those trappings. They're just not trappings anymore.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Right.

[Danielle LaPorte]

I still want the farm and live on the beach and my hot king. You kidding? I would like a company that has. Why would I not want a billion dollar valuation business? I mean, if I have to kill, I'm not going to burn myself out to get there. But why would I not want everything that this dimension has to offer? But I always have to go back and go. If it's meant for me, if it's meant for me, it will come and it will come with ease. It will come almost miraculously. Doesn't mean there's not hard work, but it's like doors will open up. It will be better than I can, could have imagined. I will be regulated, rested, enjoy. If it's meant for me.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

And would you also say too that when you sit with some of those fears of rejection, let's say, and the shame and the guilt and the, you know, those core fears that you were describing. Forgive my lack of words here, so just redirect me here as necessary. But do we not take those very, we'll say, low vibration emotions and do we not start to like, increase their resonance maybe, or increase their, their qualities?

[Danielle LaPorte]

Yes. This is great. That's the best question to ask because what you're really saying is if what we focus on expands, why would we want to focus on a negative emotion? Right? Because then it would increase. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, because it's intentional focus. It's loving focus. It's an invite. You're not yelling at it, you're not criticizing it. It's love loving focus, that changes everything. Negative focus, you gotta change. You need to be better over and over again. Then just the negativity is growing. We're just, we're gonna lighten it up, give it the intention it needs and then we pivot. Now what do you wanna actually create? So we're working with our healing on a Regular basis. I think if you're doing the energy work, if you're doing the centering practice to lighten up, to create less suffering around all the heavy stuff, then you're creating more room in your energetic field for good stuff to show up. At the same time, let's use our thoughts to create what we actually want. This is biblical. Without vision, you perish. There's lots of science that says you journal every day about what you're grateful for. More magnetic. All the things. So then we move into doing the energy work for manifesting. So it's the things we all know how to do. You get really clear on your vision. I would love to invite everybody, like, how does your success potentially harm? But ideally, help other people. Include other people. So when you're seeing yourself at the podium or on the number one podcast, or looking at your bank account or having the wedding, what are the benefits to everybody else? In my world, esoterically, we work with color. We would bring in some elements, like you would see some nature elements in your vision. So how's the light shining through the window? Is there fire? What's your relationship? Are you by the ocean? Is there a creek? Is. You know, the five elements worked into your. This is very like kind of metaphysical creating. And you go there every day. And this is. I think even people who identify as positive thinkers or manifestors or crushing it, they will. We won't. We miss the opportunity to really be mind warriors with this work. I'm going to choose the positive thought, not because I'm annihilating the negative thought. I saw the negative thought. I saw rejection, fear. I see you. I see you. You can relax. We're going here. We're going to courage, we're going to faith. We're going to. It's all. It all. It's already exists. I'm just walking into it.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Is that more. Again, language. Feel free to redirect me with the right language. But is that the. The goal of creation? Is that more of a feminine energy, like irrespective of sex and how you identify? You know, when we think about creation and alchemy, I think. And nourishment and love, I think about being more in our feminine energy maybe than the hustle and, you know, search and destroy and find and kill the animal and bring it back to the trap. Is it? Is it. Would you say that that's the crux of what you're saying? Or is it.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Would that.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Would that be a correct. Would that be a correct way to summarize you need.

[Danielle LaPorte]

You need both. And I think we get imbalanced when we're just in the feminine and we just want to go with the flow and magnetized.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah.

[Danielle LaPorte]

And we're obviously out of balance when it's just crush it, hack it, slay it, hunt the thing. You need both. So ideally, it's the heart center, it's the feminine qualities. It's inclusiveness, it's loving kindness, it's joy, it's generosity that is inspiring you. That's the original seed. The energy starts there, and then the masculine principle, which is the mind, picks it up and runs with it.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah, yeah.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Where we're really in trouble is when you've got stuff that's just mind stuck. Yes.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Well, this is. This is the. This is. You're saying it much better than I could. I think that a lot of women, myself included, sometimes, are just stuck in our heads. We're just stuck in the success and the achievement and the degree and the title and the this and the that. And you. The. The creation piece, the sitting in your heart, the sitting in your soma, the sitting in your body is. Is lost. That creation piece, before you can take it and run with it, I think is often stepped over.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Yes. The mind is the masculine principle, and the mind is the ego. For better, for worse. The ego never goes away. The. The ego is. And by the way, the ego is not the problem. It's us thinking the ego is a problem. Yeah, but it's like, doesn't matter what gender. You are much more healthy and fulfilling to be inwardly inspired. Just like, I gotta do this. I gotta do this for all these really healthy reasons. All right, let's go. Deliverables, objectives. Then go hack it, crush it, and slay it for sure.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Yeah. Okay. Dr. Stephanie, would you like to do the centering practice?

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

I would love to.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Okay, so first, set your intention. Do you want to use the centering practice for healing something or for manifesting and creating something?

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

I have to choose Manifesting.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Okay, so your breathing is natural, meaning you're inhaling and exhaling through your nose. And your mouth is closed. And you put your right hand on your heart center. Just take a few deep breaths. Fuller than normal. Typical. Then you can have your hand wherever you like it. If you want to be more grounded, you have your hands palm down, palms down, facing the earth. You want more energy, palms open, more receptivity. Okay. And then just think a really positive thought or a high vibration energy. Just bring that in. Or a really beautiful memory. Just getting the mind to relax. Less chat, more pleasure. Can you see in your heart center this golden, luminous quality of light shining in all directions, front of your heart, back of your heart. As Buddhists would say, unconditionally friendly quality. And then you're going to bring a vision, a word, kind of a scene of whatever it is that you want to manifest into your heart center. It's just like an aspect. It's not this big abundant life in all areas. It's one aspect that's the tell, that's the significance. It's the marker. You can hear it, you can see it as a sentence, you can see it as a moment. It could be a text, it could be something you look at. And now you're going to really move into the energy work and you're going to work with color. I'll walk you through these colors. So you're breathing into your heart, the full range of the color spectrum. It's as if light is shining through a stained glass window. So those colors become light pinks, kind of fuchsia lit from behind. And then you've got that peachy color. It's like a really luminous light orange. And then you've got gold, really shimmery, buttery quality of yellow. And then minty green, very healing color frequency. And then you move into that sky blue, really luminous, iridescent. And then the last color on the full color spectrum is that indigo color, but it's very light. So everything has got that opulescent shimmering. So like a lilac color, a lavender. Whatever you've brought into the center of your heart to manifest is basking in all those colors, that full range of healing frequency, focus, positive, intention. It's being energized. Full range of energies, high to low. And the pinks, the peach, the golds, the minty greens, the sky blue, that lilac colander calendar color. And then you're going to bring in a dire frequency of virtue, or what I would call a soul quality. I'll make a few suggestions. Generosity, quality of abundance, quality of joy. Might want to call on your higher guidance system. You're really imbibing it. You're really vivifying those colors. And that vision with this energetic quality could be all the qualities. Happiness, loving, kindness. Your breathing's natural. Just let that vision really soak in that full range of focus, positive intention. All colors on the spectrum, higher quality energy. Take a few deep breaths,

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Then you

[Danielle LaPorte]

breathe your eyes to open and you leave it. So don't go back right now and think, oh, I Should have added this in. Or I should just, like, make a little stronger request. You just did the energy work, which is where all change happens. Just leave it there. Yeah.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Thank you. That's awesome. All right, so tell us where we can find more about your work, more about you, the new book, all the things. I understand that there's an app being created, so tell us a little bit about that. If you are able to.

[Danielle LaPorte]

To bless and release is an ecosystem, you can find it everywhere. We are. We love it when people come to danielleporte.com bless to get all the things. If you want to get it on Amazon or wherever else books are sold, that is cool, too. There's the bless and release book, audio and print, and then there's the super blesser experience, which is like how you really embody these practices and do the energy work. And we're also. We've got a facilitator kit if people want to coach with his content and do workshops. And you can find me everywhere, Danielleporte.com, instagram, all the places. And the app is still being quietly built. Like, the vision is resilient and radiant. It's just in the background. It's being bootstrapped. It's taking a more feminine approach. Yeah.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Love that. Love that. Danielle, my friend, it's always lovely to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for doing this with me today.

[Danielle LaPorte]

Love it. You are the deepest. You're the most fun. Thank you.

[Dr. Stephanie Estima]

Yeah. All right, friends, welcome to the after party where I highlight some of my favorite moments, not so favorite moments, and what I thought overall of the episode. So I'll frame this by saying that Danielle is a friend. She's been a friend of mine for many years, and as a friend, I would say that she has taught me a lot about, I'll say, sinking into my body, not being so mechanistic, and trying to qualify and quantify everything. And so I think she did a really masterful job at speaking my language. Like I said early on in the conversation, at some point, I understand 7,000 steps. I understand a certain amount of volume of weights lifted per week. I understand a VO2 max number. It's really difficult for me to understand how I. If I am progressing in my spiritual fitness. Like, what are the KPIs, right? So I thought that she did a really good job at deconstructing that. I really liked the beginning of our conversation where she was talking about cutting cords being a huge letdown or going no contact being a huge letdown. I think that it is very trendy now online to see people doing that. And I think that she really accurately said that even though you cut the cords or you cut off the, the contacts, there's still anger and residue there. It's the, it's the boundary setting to the extreme. Like obviously set boundaries, but don't set so many boundaries that now you are divorcing yourself from the opportunity to actually feel difficult situations and improve from it. So really loved that. And then I also really liked the, you know, this is, this is me being like a mech, a mechanist at heart. I'm like, give me examples of metrics. She's so, she's so gracious. I'm like, how would spiritual fitness give me some examples of metrics? And so she was really good about, you know, giving examples of mantras and breath work and goal setting. I thought that those were all very, I mean, I understood them. So I think that I'm hoping that you did as well. And then the other really key piece, and I think that this is a really big crux of her book, is that what, you know, there's force and there's anti force, right? So if you are trying to force away anger or you are trying to crush something or overcome something or behave in a, you're trying to make something up or you're being punitive towards yourself or others, it's just going to come back stronger. Which I really, I mean, in my own, you know, lived experience up until this point can say that it's true. You can be angry for so long and it can be initially a very effective way to create a lot of energy very, very quickly. But over time it really just does wear you out because the anger still remains and it pushes back on you. So I really like that and loved the conversation for my exorcist. Emily's in the chat on high, you know, my high achieving women who are trying to prove their worthiness are trying to prove something to someone, maybe themselves. What are some of the best practices that we can do? And how can we let go of resentment and the residue that that leaves on our nervous system? And I really like, there was a moment in the show where she kind of leaned in and she was like, well, how's that working for you? You know, how's that, how are all those anxiety medications and the autoimmune disease and all and your children are in there, but like, how's all like, we are very, very sick. And I think that she spoke really well to that. And then the other thing that I really liked was the idea of rejection. When we have this fear of being rejected, whether we are rejecting parts of ourselves or we have a fear of being rejected from others, the shame and the guilt and the core fears that surround that, how can we, in her words, bless so sending positive intentions towards these very, very complicated and difficult emotions so that they have less grip on us. So really, really appreciated her there. And I hope that you, I hope that you appreciated this conversation. I think that the whole, at least for me, the conversation was moving towards more of a balance between the mind or the masculine energy, let's say, and the heart or the feminine, so that we can create and then we can take that creation, move it up into the mind, and then the mind can take it and run with it. And I think for so many of us, myself included, I am very much mind, I am very much more in my masculine energy, let's say, than I am in my heart. It takes me, I actually need movement to get into my heart. And when I am there, I have great ideas. I have things that flow that typically don't otherwise. So I really like the balance or the movement or the suggestion towards more balance. And my question for you, if you're listening this far, you are a deep roast, Betty. What is the thing that you are taking from this conversation and applying in your life? Because you've listened this far, you've invested some time, some energy and some focus. So what are you taking from this and what are you gonna do about it? And we read the comments, so I will be looking out for the comments in the coming weeks after you listen to this. So with that, I bid you adieu and we'll see you next time. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and now I must give you the obligatory legal and medical disclaimer. This podcast, Better with Dr. Stephanie, is for general information only. The advice and recommendations we discuss do not replace medical, chiropractic, or any other primary healthcare provider's advice, treatment or care in the consumption of this podcast. There is no doctor patient relationship and the use and implementation of the information discussed are at the sole discretion of the listener. Please take this information to your primary healthcare provider to make the best choice for you. Remember, I am a doctor, but I am not your doctor, and these episodes are meant for educational purposes only.