A Journey of Transpersonal Transformation: Finding Purpose After a Career Limiting Diagnosis | Elen Sentier

00:00
So these friends sort of said, hey, come on, girl. You know there's a lot more than just your body and your everyday life. You've got all these other connections as well. Come on, let's go to these lectures. And you can get into small stuff that's both mental and spiritual at the same time. So I went along, and there was this big bloke lecturing on the stage, beautiful voice.

00:29
And to be honest, after about five minutes, he could have been reading the telephone directory and I would have been there like that of him. Because it was like, what he was saying was, do you know when something goes right into you and in a sense, it doesn't matter what the words were, you just know. And I thought, I can't really remember what he's talking about, but I'm getting bits of it, but I want it, whatever it is he's got, I want it. So I sort of staggered my way up to the stage afterwards and said, I want to sign on.

00:58
And later, as in a few moments, discovered that what he'd been talking about was a form of psychology called the transpersonal psychology, which is the most lovely, allowing, being self-responsible, enabling, i.e. not telling you what to do, but helping you find your own way through it. And

01:27
That's what this is. Today's guest, Elen Sentier, shares her journey of discovery and transformation. Her story is one that many of us can relate to, I think. At a turning point in her life, Elen faced a devastating diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, which forced her to leave her career as a software engineer and a dancer. And it was at this moment that her life turned upside down and it left her feeling lost and uncertain about the future.

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But as Elen will share with us, sometimes the most challenging moments in our lives can lead to the most profound changes. She turned to her spiritual roots and started exploring ancient witchcraft practices that helped her find new meaning and purpose in her life. Elen's journey ultimately led her to become a transpersonal psychotherapist, where she helps others find their own path to healing and transformation. In this episode, we delve into Elen's powerful story and how she navigated through the challenges of a career change, a chronic illness,

02:25
and a deep spiritual awakening. We'll also explore the principles of transpersonal psychology and how they can help us connect with our inner selves. Knowing me, you know I had no idea about this. Elen's unique perspective and expertise will inspire and empower you to embrace your own journey of transformation. But before we get into the episode, I wanna thank my Patreon members for supporting this episode. If you wanna join the community and get involved in the T-shirt giveaway and bonus episodes, check out...

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patreon.com forward slash the life shift podcast for more information on all the different tiers. So sit back, relax and join us on a fascinating conversation with Elen Sentier on the life shift podcast. I'm Matt Gilhooly and this is the life shift candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever.

03:26
Hello, my friends. Welcome to the Life Shift podcast. I am here with what I am assuming is going to be a new friend, Elen. Hey, Elen. Great to meet you. Nice to meet you as well. And we were just talking about how hot it is in our locations and how much we are kind of melting today because it is quite a hot one here. I am in Florida and we're going to be close to a hundred degrees today. And I think that is obscene.

03:55
That is melting point and a half for me. I would probably have died of heat stroke and be in hospital by now. And this is why I enjoy the invention of the air conditioner. And I choose to stay indoors most of the time in the summer here. Yeah, we don't have that problem quite here. I'm in England, in Great Britain, but in the England bit, just on the borders of Wales.

04:24
in a lovely, it's not mountainous, but we've got beautiful hills all around us. And I'm right out in the country. So it's very pleasant. Oh, that's beautiful. That sounds lovely. And so we've been talking for a little bit of trying to get you on the podcast to talk about your journey. And I think your story will be very relatable to a lot of people because a lot of people will face.

04:53
you know, a turning point very similar to yours. They might do something different with it, but your particular life shift, which I'm not going to give away just yet, is something that I think a lot of people kind of will face, but what you chose to do with it and the direction that you chose to take, maybe a little bit different. And so I'm looking forward to hearing a little bit about your story today. So just thank you for being a part of the Life Shift podcast. Well, thank you for inviting me, Matt. It's lovely to be here.

05:23
and I'm happy to share with people. Right, I mean, I think, you know, I tell people this all the time that, you know, we don't have to hear a story that's exactly like ours to connect. These are human stories and so many layers to us, hopefully. Right, and that even just like a sentence that someone says and a story that seems like so off the wall if I read the title of the episode, but I'm like, oh my gosh, I really connect with what they just said there.

05:52
And so I think there's a part of everyone's story that is relatable and makes us far more connected than we are different. Yep. I would try to agree with you, Matt. And as a life coach, I hear people's stories a lot and there are always underlying routes that we can share. Oh, I bet that is quite interesting. And we'll talk a little bit about that. I think having a podcast where we talk about like these pivotal moments that change.

06:20
people's lives forever. My instance, my mom dying in a motorcycle accident when I was a kid, you probably hear a lot of really deep-seated things that projected much farther than that particular moment in their life. I tell people this all the time on the podcast that in my 30s, which was far beyond the time in which my mother passed, I was talking to a therapist, and she was the one that uncovered

06:49
for me, which seemed very logical at the time, but she was like, you realize that every decision that you've made since, you've made with that scared eight-year-old's mind and decision-making power because you were afraid of abandonment and you were afraid of failing and losing someone else. And I was like, oh my God, but the whole, everything parted, the clouds parted and whatnot. Yeah, all falls into the right place, doesn't it? Yeah, yeah.

07:18
Yeah, and it's amazing how, you know, I'm not gonna say that that was an insignificant moment, but one moment in time projected 20 years throughout my life and permeated through that. And so it's just so interesting to hear people's stories about, you know, someone getting a piece of mail that changed their life or someone, you know, like someone said something and it triggered something in someone else. So I just, I'm so lucky.

07:45
to have this platform to be able to do this? And I can imagine that some of the things you do as a life coach probably feel very similar. I suspect they probably do, but my pivotal moment, well, I've had several, I think most people have several in their lives, but the one I think we wanna talk about today is a complete career change for me. I grew up and went to university, did all the usual things.

08:14
And I've got a very good career as a software engineer for our ministry of defense, creating relational databases, which was incredibly good fun and had a lovely team that I could really work with. And we were all like friends. I wasn't just the boss sitting up the top telling everybody everything. We all worked together and that was really fun. And we were creating new things. We were writing new software.

08:42
that hadn't been there and then relating it into, this was a little bit before the internet really got going. And so we were creating our own version of the internet and Gmail and all this kind of thing. So that it could go right through the whole of the system that I was working and all the buildings and across the country. So, you know, that was wow. I don't mind getting up in the morning for this. Let's have a breakfast meeting. Let's have a supper meeting and all this kind of thing, which is really fun.

09:12
And at the same time, because I started life doing an awful lot of dance and my first degree was in modern dance. So while I was doing the software, I was also able to dance in London. I don't know whether you've heard of a woman called Arlene Phillips, but she's quite a famous dancer and she ran a marvelous group. She's been on all sorts of things. And I was able to work for her.

09:42
and through a friend of mine who was teaching for her. So we both worked teaching class for her. And I adored it because I was dancing. I've never been so fit in my life. Total six pack muscles and the whole thing. And then a little bit after Christmas, and this was a long time ago, but sort of early January that year, I woke up in the morning and I couldn't move the shoulder.

10:11
It was totally stiff. If I moved it a little bit, it was like scream. And I said, what, what? What the hell? You know, can I even get any clothes on to go to work? And it kept, then it went down there. Then it went to a hip and then it went to the other shoulder and then it went to a knee and my knee started swelling up. And you can imagine, I had a dancer's body. So, you know, I had legs up to my armpits and all this kind of stuff. And I got this knee that was suddenly this size. So.

10:41
To be honest, that was one of the most shock horror moments that I no longer had the body that I knew. Oh yeah, overnight. Yeah. Wow. There was like, and you know, as a dancer, that's like the last thing that you want to deal with because yeah, you're like, how do I fix this? And it's, if I can't fix it, do I actually want to go on? And I did have those feelings.

11:09
Like if you can't dance, then what? Is that what you mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

11:16
My cats rescued me actually. I got very, very, very depressed. And they came and lay up me. And they looked at me and said, you're staying. Which is really nice. But I've always had this kind of relationship with animals. But of course I couldn't do my job anymore. I couldn't get onto the underground train to get to work successfully, not without possibly falling over.

11:47
And I got diagnosed eventually, and it's a thing called rheumatoid arthritis, which can be very sudden, and it's an autoimmune disease. It's not a muscle problem or, you know, not a joints problem in that sense. But what happens is effectively your white blood cells, which deal with germs, they forget to be able to tell the difference between you and not you. So they start eating your tendons and everything.

12:14
causing swelling and all this kind of thing. So yeah, it's fun. It's a fun disease, really good. That doesn't sound very fun. I don't know if you're joking here. I am, but without it, I wouldn't be where I am now. You know, and that's a super healthy way. And that is so important. Yeah, it's a healthy way to look at things. You don't start there. Yeah, but you don't start there, do you Matt?

12:43
You start in the depression and the down and then like I don't want to go on and all of this kind of thing and So there I was out of a job and no idea how to get another job Because what job could I do right you were out of these these both Situations right you were the dancing software and no longer as a super software engineer

13:13
I'd lost my team. This is before remote work. This is before any ability to do any of accommodations in any kind of way as well, I'm guessing. We didn't even have mobile phones at that point, not even the brick variety. So it's like, if I can't go to work, what work can I possibly do? You know what's interesting is you have...

13:43
It's interesting because you have this super artistic thing where you could move your body and you were a dancer and you were expressing things in that way. And then you also had this math, science brain that was creating, right? Creating something from numbers, letters, whatever, coding of some sort. One and zero. Everything had one and zero. Binary codes, right? And now...

14:11
this autoimmune thing that suddenly comes on keeps you from being able to express yourself in either case, like either side of your brain is now like, now what? Yeah, exactly, absolutely, yeah. You know, and I don't know that, you know, I don't know that there's a lot of people that can relate to, it's like someone taking away like your biggest passion, and then also taking away your...

14:40
your way to make money. It's like, that's really overwhelming. And I can see why you went into this kind of space of not so great. Bloomin' awful to put it mildly and without swearing. But- Swear if you need to. Yes.

14:59
Consider I've sworn but it's it's hard. It's bad and People go through this. I mean people lose limbs people go through trauma from an accident and

15:14
Any kind of trauma will reduce you to a really bad place. And mine sort of did it, you know, well, let's do it in spades, girl. You know, we'll have it physical and mental, you know. Not just one, we'll go through the lot. And...

15:32
Anyway, what happened was sort of crawling about, taking a load of medications while they decided to try and find one that worked, because each person who has rheumatoid is slightly different. And what might work for you, Matt, might not work for me. So there isn't a one pill fits all kind of thing. So you go through things, and that was a bit better, but if we keep on with that, then it's got these side effects. And that was a bit better, but...

16:01
actually it's worn off now. So that took a year before I got decently sorted. In the meantime, I still had friends, thank the gods, and my friends sort of said, okay, you're also into this. I was, okay, let's drop the clanger. I was brought up as a witch. My family has followed the old witch gen.

16:30
which ways of Britain, many, many, many, many, many generations, like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. And there are quite a lot of people like that. We don't all wear pointy hats anymore. We've given up on broomsticks now. But so- That's fascinating. It is. And we'll do another podcast. So these friends sort of said, hey, come on girl, you know, there's a lot more than just, you know, your body and-

17:00
everyday life, you've got all these other connections as well. Come on, let's go to these lectures and you can get into small stuff and that's both mental and spiritual at the same time. So I went along and there was this big bloke lecturing on the stage, beautiful voice. And to be honest, after about five minutes, he could have been reading the telephone directory and I would have been there.

17:29
like that of him. Because it was like, what he was saying was, do you know when something goes right into you? And in a sense, it doesn't matter what the words were, you just know. And I thought, I can't really remember what he's talking about, but I'm getting bits of it, but I want it. Whatever it is he's got, I want it. So I sort of staggered my way up to the stage afterwards and said, I want to sign on. And later, as

17:59
in a few moments discovered that what he'd been talking about was a form of psychology called the transpersonal psychology, which is the most lovely, allowing, being self-responsible, enabling, i.e. not telling you what to do, but helping you find your own way through it.

18:25
I thought, this is it. And this actually sort of fits with a lot of the old witchcraft ways that I was brought up in. And it was sort of like, ooh, they're working together. So he said, OK, fill in the application form, and we'll have an interview, and la, la, la. So I ended up doing my second degree in transpersonal psychotherapy, which actually didn't exist when I started. It's really funny, because when I was doing the dance degree at the beginning of my.

18:54
life, it was my year that created the first modern educational dance degree at the university that I was at. So you're just a trailblazer. I better say yes, hadn't I? I better say yes. Right place, right time. He was already teaching this, but he wasn't teaching it as a degree. And it was our year that started, that turned it into a degree, which was put through London University.

19:24
And I was completely, it was beautiful. It was the most beautiful form of working out what was inside you. And as you said with your mother, how this had affected you and how it still affected you and how to make friends with these things that were hurting. Like for me was, you know, the disease. And it's so we don't fight it.

19:52
You're never going to get rid of it. You know, we can't exorcise this thing. You've got it. So why don't you make friends with it and learn to live with it and learn to receive the gifts that it will have for you? Which can all sound horrible when, well, would have sounded horrible a year before when I was like, ah. But now it was like there. No, now it was like, oh, there's a path.

20:21
There's a bridge to somewhere else. Can you explain like the difference between maybe more traditional and this trans personal? Well, the word trans personal, trans means across and between. And your personal self is like Elen or Matt. And it's the one we've known all our lives. But, all right, I'll give you a funny little thing. How old, I'm holding a piece of skin, Matt. How old is that piece of skin? Do you know?

20:51
Roughly? I do not know. About six weeks. Hmm. So I'm holding the bone that's in my finger. So how old do you think that bone is? Man, you're hurting me on my science knowledge.

21:06
It's, it may be about seven years. Okay. So, my body has completely remade itself every seven years. So how many times, yes, don't think about it, but you know, I've been remade, my body side has been remade a load and load and load of times.

21:28
But I'm still here. Your body's the same. You're still Matt. You're still you. You're a different you than you were 30 years ago. But you're you. Now the transpersonal recognizes that there is this indefinable energy, quantumy type of thing, I don't know, that somehow lives inside you, but is you.

21:56
In the old witchy ways, my dad used to call our bodies, our spacesuits for getting around on planet Earth. And we live in this. I've heard that before. It's great. It's great, isn't it? I think it's been used quite a bit. Some people call it a meat suit. I think I prefer a space suit. I do too. I think so. It sounds nicer. It does. It's messy. Yeah. And you sort of think, am I supposed to eat this? Yeah.

22:25
But so the transpersal recognizes that. It recognizes there is an energy that is somehow you. Consciousness then. Call it consciousness. Jung was very much into this. C.G. Jung, a psychologist, had done his work too. And so when you're reaching to somebody, say I was reaching to you as a client,

22:55
what's going on inside, but there are ways of not asking it that way, which is sort of like, I don't know what's going on inside, I've got indigestion. Is there ways of pointing the question? Yeah? So that you could, you'd reach in or taking you on a little meditation journey or something, you go, oh, I've never seen that before. But it's not about telling you. It's not about saying, oh, this is your...

23:25
super ego or this is your alternate personality or something like this. It's allowing you to decide, you to discover from finding out yourself. Does that make sense? It's kind of like a, yeah, like a, almost like a guide, if you will. Like, let me help you explore, like let me help you dig up the garden. Yes. But also like maybe you want to consider this or maybe not, but this is your choice and this is your life and...

23:54
kind of this guide of some sort. That's exactly it. But then again, we're going into, I'm a psychotherapist, and the word therapist comes from the Greek word, seraps, and that means someone who walks alongside.

24:11
And that, I think, is what you were saying. Yeah. You know, in my real job, I've been a teacher for a while in higher education. And I never want the students to call me Matt. And I say, you know, we use the rhyme, I'm not the sage on the stage, I'm the guide on the side. Because I'm just another person that might have a little bit more knowledge in this area.

24:40
then you do and we're going to talk about that. And I think that's absolutely perfect and beautiful. And as a teacher, of course, that's what you want to do with your students. Because you want them to learn that you don't want to produce clones of you. It's, you know. No, I certainly don't. Think planet Earth's got enough with just one Elen, you know. Yeah.

25:08
enough spacesuits, like one spacesuit is enough. That will do. That will do. Yeah. And it is about that. So I went from this person who was a software engineer and a dancer. And there's lots of weird things going on because, I mean, we know much more about it with AI now, which actually uses quantum physics in order to work. But

25:35
We were knowing about it even then, even if you couldn't do it as you can now. So there was lots of weird stuff. I mean, computers get glitches and programs go wrong, but there isn't any reason behind why they go wrong. They just do. At least if there is, we can't find it. And not even if we're sort of super, super whiz-bang things, I mean, we used to use the words features and benefits and you know, somebody come along and say, my machine's just done this. It's a feature.

26:06
And I'm curious, before you jump further, I'm wondering, so you, you, you hinted at your, your background and the way you grew up and then, but you know, you started the story with, with this more traditional, if you will, job position schooling and, and then dance, which is also fairly traditional, I would say, even though it's

26:35
on the artistic side and people would say, is that a job? But you talk about this, was there a part of you that was kind of masking or pushing your family background away? And then this was kind of like, your diagnosis was almost like reopening that door to this space and bringing you back to that? Yeah, you hit it very much, Matt. I mean, can you imagine putting witch on your CV? Even nowadays, it's like,

27:06
She's going to be weird, she's going to be difficult. I'm not sure about that. I think I'll have this one instead, when you're recruiting. Even if you're not particularly prejudiced, you're worried. So no, you don't rush out and say this. But I was just going to take you into what might make sense there. Because as I got to know Ian, my tutor, and his partner, Barbara, who were my main tutors in the transpersonal,

27:36
Hang on a minute. The way they're saying this is sounding like the old magic ways that I know. So, you know, after a cup of coffee, is it? In, sense, sense, sense, sense, sense, yeah. Is it, ah, you're into this stuff too, yeah. And then with Barbara, the same thing. And of course, they've got huge spiritual backgrounds as well. As being, I mean...

28:02
Ian had also been an industrial psychologist and all sorts of incredible things like that, and Barbara had done all sorts of similar amazing stuff. But inside there was this other part of them that was conscious of a world around them that we couldn't see, and this was coming out. And the more transpersonal people that I've met, we've all got it in our own way. It won't be the same.

28:32
Everybody's will be different. And so I was able to bring that through and help people.

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in a way that I hadn't ever known I could before.

28:49
Do you see a correlation between what you were doing as a software engineer or as in that do you see a correlation in that approach and what you what you kind of morphed into? Yep, I do. I've got to know a lot of science since then. I'm married to an ex particle physicist who's actually able to explain it without the equations. He can do it. The cat sat on the mat.

29:17
which is really helpful. And they sort of get into words about this long and equations and you're thinking, never mind, I'm going out now. But no, he could do it so that he could explain it in a few words, which was really, really helpful. So I started getting the concepts and then I started seeing correlations across of, I won't get deep into it, but there's a thing called entanglement theory in

29:48
physics, quantum physics, which means that if I turn a card over here on Earth, somebody on, I don't know, planet X, Y, Z in about five solar system, five star systems over, will also turn it over in the exact opposite.

30:06
and you get this. Now they use this in artificial intelligence now, in the creation of artificial intelligence for computers. And they're actually using this and they've measured it and they can prove that it's there. And that is so similar to, I know exactly what's going on in another place that is sort of like you are eight hours behind me.

30:33
without seeing you or talking to you. So you start thinking, well, if they can do that with the quantum and the AI, perhaps these guys way back were onto something. I can't explain it.

30:51
Yeah, and I would imagine that's hard to try to explain to naysayers or people that don't have the words or the understanding. You don't even start. You don't even try. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, whatever. See you later. What's the point? They don't really want to know. Yeah, well, you're also not in America, so there's a different story.

31:20
Maybe I'll cut that out. I hope you do. That's good. You know, I was thinking what you said, and it makes a lot of sense to... There are a lot of people that can get this education, right? Will get this education, not yours in particular, just any education. You get the book smarts. You can understand things. You can understand the processes. You can understand whatever it may be. But then it's like what you and your...

31:48
and your mentors, your tutors had, was almost like the, like I pictured almost like, I'm picturing it like a gel that fits in between kind of some spikes and it kind of just makes this flat surface. I don't know why I have this vision, but it's almost like this spiritual part of you fills in the gaps in which the teachings kind of give you just like, here it is, the regimented whatever, but now you have this extra component.

32:18
that just makes it a smooth ride and not like a bumpy kind of thing going along. Do you, is that, am I thinking in the right way? I think so. It feels good. You still do get a bumpy ride every now and again. That's usually because your personality is going, I shan't, I don't want to, I'm frightened. But okay, there are ways through that. But what you made me think of is the thing that is confusing all physicists at the moment, which is dark energy.

32:49
which is 90% of our universe, but we can't see it. We don't know how to look at it. And yet it fills everything. And that was your gel was like reminding me of that. That's interesting. It was only my idea. So, you know, don't take it as sort of gospel-y thing or anything like that. I just think, you know, I think of a lot of people I know that have educated, like I have...

33:17
I have three degrees. Like, who cares? You know, like I have a lot of information in my head. I've read a lot of books and I did a lot of assignments. But I didn't have, until I found this podcast and I found the medium that kind of worked for me, I didn't have that gel. I didn't have the thing that made all the steps make sense, that fit them all together. And so that's what I kind of see as your upbringing and this...

33:46
I don't know if spiritual is the right word, but that part of you almost feels like that's the gel of all the information. That's why everything clicks. That's why things, I know there's bumps, but I don't know. That's kind of how I'm picturing it and listening to your story and kind of relating to something that might make sense to me. Thank you, Matt, because I think you're right. I think you're describing it beautifully.

34:16
of what you might call the shamanic type paths. Shaman is just a word, it just means, it's the tungest word of Asia, which means one who knows. That's all it means. But there are peoples like that all over the world and our own people here in Britain, we're the same sort of people who do things. We've been doing them for a very long time. We've had to keep our heads down for at least 2000 years. So we're damn good at it now. All the things.

34:46
base of the thing is that we are really and truly all interconnected. So all of the things we know are interconnected. Even little things like if plants don't have sunlight and photosynthesize we don't have any oxygen. So incredibly simple little things but if you don't have them the whole world falls to pieces.

35:16
even in the subtle things like connections with people. And we've all been into a room and thought, I shouldn't be here. This isn't the right place. And it feels right and you were invited and everybody's talking to you and it's lovely. And you're like, no, there's something wrong. And then maybe weeks later you go, oh, that's what that was about. Because you realize, so that's something that you can't measure in an ordinary sort of way. And you can't.

35:45
put a brain pattern on it that says this is why you thought that. You just felt it, really. And that, I think, is all part of this interconnection.

35:57
Yeah, I'm through these conversations, I'm learning so much about what, I don't know if I'm going to go as broad as civilization, but we've been taught to create walls, we've been taught to mask, we've been taught to

36:19
pretend. I don't know what word is appropriate there, but you know, through these conversations, it's like, so many of us as children, or even as you know, you as a as a young adult or young professional, kind of like, ignore this part, or let's not talk about this part of me that is probably 90% of me. And you know, it is me, but I can't tell anyone about it because of what we assumed.

36:48
from the world around us that we shouldn't talk about. And so the more I have these conversations, the more I realize that even in that sense, we're so connected because we can all, we can all unfortunately relate to that feeling. Yes, we have. We've all been there. We've all felt it.

37:12
Do you think that, you know, you telling your story, it's like, I almost see your, a bigger shift in the sense of walking into that room that day. It was, yeah. No, you know, like, you know, like that opened the door to like this new future to you. The diagnosis certainly stopped you in your tracks, but it's like, had you not gone to that seminar.

37:40
Had you not gone to that? Had you gone to breakfast that day with someone else? You know, like, it's interesting to me that you were in that space at the right time. Like you said, when you were at your dance studio was the first year they made that program and then you went here, you know, like right place, right time, or was that always in the cards? That I can't answer you. I think that was always- Well, me neither. I think that was always a possibility and we're gonna back.

38:10
quantum again, you know, is the cat in the box, is it dead or alive? You won't know until you open the box. But there is always possibility, but there's infinite possibilities. So I could have chosen, as you said, not to go.

38:26
I didn't. Did you feel a pull to go? It felt right, yes. Okay. Yeah. So yes, in that sense, there was a pull. It was like, no, I'm going there today, not there. And that kind of pull. And I do follow them. Not everybody follows their, what I call their instincts. I tend to because they usually are right. If I just follow what my brain says, it usually goes wrong.

38:56
If I don't involve the instincts and the intuition. So yes, and yes, you're right. It was a huge pull How is this version of you? Different than the the dancing software engineer version of you Well, she's a damn sight less naive She she she knows what she's able to connect better And I don't have to

39:26
I don't have to hide. It sounds like you were innately doing that. Yes, but it was innately. You started your story talking about, you know, you were a software engineer that was like kind of just skirted by, but the focus of your conversation was that you connected with the people around you and you were a team and you were not, you know, the boss and it was all about this fluidity of connection and relationships and not so much about like the actual...

39:56
job that you had. So I think maybe you were just naturally doing that and now you can just lean into that more openly. I think you're right, Matt. I think I was. And because that's what I like, I don't feel a need to be, you know, I'm the goddess boss at the top of the table kind of thing. I don't feel the need to. Some people do. Some people like that kind of kudos. I don't. So it was always like, you know, a couple of my young... We can dig into that.

40:26
We could. We have another podcast. But I mean, a couple of the lads in my team are much better coders than me. But they couldn't do my design job and they couldn't do the relation, the relating across to like, well, if we do it like that, then we're going to have to do this with these guys and then we're going to have to take them in through this way. Otherwise, it's not going to work because my job was partly the project managing of it of like.

40:52
building it for the people who are going to use it, and then making sure that we got the funding and that we got the whole caboodle, as well as, let's do it like this. Well, I've never done it like that. Well, so, start trying. Oh, all right then. The intuition that you had served you well in that connecting the end user to the coder? I know it did because I know the systems worked, and.

41:20
I know that in their much, much later incarnation, they are still working now, because I still know people who, where I was. And it worked. They, we related to the people who were going to use it. We didn't tell them we were giving them this system and they had to learn how to use it. We learned how they already worked and then built the system to fit in with that, which is...

41:49
as I understand it, not so much what is done now. But I loved it. And you're right, I love the relationships and I love the relating across.

41:58
You said that you're less naive. What was naive about that earlier version of you?

42:06
I couldn't see into people as easily as I can now. If somebody is lying to me, I know. If somebody was lying to me then, I might have known, but I didn't want to know, so I wouldn't listen to that. Now I just say, they're lying. Do you still like them, in spite of that? And that is partly age, but it's also the training.

42:37
I can see more why they're lying. When I was sort of 25, 30, I would probably have thought, but why would they lie to me? You know, what have I done that they're lying to me? And taken on stuff which has absolutely nothing to do with me. Right. Whereas now I'm sort of saying they're lying. Okay, what's going on around there? Do I need to know? And how shall I respond? Because there are lots of reasons for lying. Some of them.

43:06
They're not nasty. Sometimes people don't even know they're lying, which is fascinating. Exactly. It's a whole, you know, when you started out talking about that kind of understanding or knowing what people are doing or saying, I immediately, I thought, wow, this version of you is taking on a lot more weight. And then you continued on the story in which it sounds like you aren't because

43:35
now you realize or you know that it's not about you in most cases, these things that you're seeing around you, whereas a younger version or people like myself, we might take that on a lot more, like, what did I do? And then that becomes the weight of the day that we carry with us. But it sounds like you don't have necessarily that much of that. I'm sure you're a human, so you probably have. I still get it. But no, you're right. I don't.

44:05
And that is partly the training. And of course it's one of the things that if, when clients come to me, if they, they will be feeling like that. Everybody feels like that to some extent. You have to say, look, whoa, stop carrying that bloke's suitcase. Put it down. It's hard. Give it back. And the other thing, which of course people don't realize, and I do now, is that, you know, you think I'm helping them. I'll just help them through this. I'll carry this for them.

44:32
But as long as you've got hold of it, they can't deal with it. They can't learn from it. They can't do whatever they need to do with it because you're carting it back. And, you know, once, once you sort of realize that being that helpful is actually being a hindrance, it's like, Whoa, I think I'll back off from that one. I think I see a lot of parents do that. There's a lot of enabling parents and.

44:59
It's not, it's most of it I would imagine is out of love or fear that they won't be able to figure it out. But in the end, I've seen more damage later on than good in the moment. And so, but it's hard. I think we are conditioned to, I guess, either hide things or want to help other people or not burden other people.

45:24
But at the same time, when you think you're not burdening other people, you actually are, because then they're worried about what connected. Like this all the time. And you think, well, everybody back off a bit, please. Let's give ourselves some space. Everyone take a breath. What kind of people do you work with in your new world? It's not a new world, but in what you're doing now. Oh, people who.

45:53
know there's something more, but they don't know what it is. They're frustrated. They may feel stuck in a box. They may feel put down. They may be carrying burdens that they shouldn't have. They almost certainly have lousy boundaries. They say yes far too often when they actually mean no. And they can be in any industry, though. I mean, I've had stock brokers and other civil servants and military people and...

46:22
artists and everything. I'd imagine that they'd have to have a level of self-awareness of some sort. Yeah. Right. So you're not for everyone. No, I'm not. And you're going to have, and they've got to be prepared to work and they're going to hear, wow, hell, you screwed that up, didn't you?

46:48
So what are we gonna do now? Right. Yeah, but they probably know. Well, they probably know they're screwed up. They probably don't know what to do. Or why. No, and that's back to your thing, like with parents who are taking too much care of their children. They'll often be picking up other people's problems or trying to live up to something that wasn't their idea in the first place.

47:15
And I bet that, you know, I mean, from a lot of these conversations, I can see that a lot of that probably stems to their upbringing or generational trauma or whatever that may be. And that's just the condition that they've been absorbing, I guess, for an extended period of time. And until you're aware, and I think this is true of just traditional talk therapy in a way, until you're ready or you're aware that...

47:43
you're ready to do something about it, but also aware that there's this situation that doesn't feel right anymore. Because I mean, like I said, it took me 20 something years to really seek out therapy and realize all the damage I was, I mean, I learned a lot from it, but all the damage I was doing to myself out of fear of abandonment. Because in my eight-year-old mind, my mother abandoned me. Not on purpose, but.

48:12
I was abandoned and so just lived through that fear for 20 something years. And well actually you probably lived with that fear instead of living through it. And what you did, what you got was a therapist I suspect, was how to work your way right through it and probably even see, well if that hadn't happened to me and if I hadn't done this, you know, 10 years after your mum died, I wouldn't be here now and I wouldn't have this opportunity and I might never have started this podcast.

48:42
100%. Yeah. No, and I do have people, and I know it's not possible, but I do have people that will ask me, you know, if you could go back in time, would you change things? My answer is no, because, you know, it's a terrible thing to say, no, I wouldn't go back and save this situation from happening. But I like where I am now and who I am now and what I've developed within me and around me.

49:11
that I don't want to change that. And so it was fascinating. But yeah, again, I mean, going back to that point of like, you have to be aware, you have to be self-aware, you have to be ready to do the work. And it sounds like you are, you know, helping people through that quicksand or the mud that they're stuck in as they kind of move through their life. And as long as they're willing to work and willing to...

49:38
acknowledge mistakes, acknowledge things that have happened to them, and realize that acknowledging the thing doesn't mean anybody's being judgmental of you. It's just saying, that's tough. I did this and that happened and I can't put the milk back in the bottle. I can't change it. So what do I do now that is creative that can move me and anybody who wants to come with me forward?

50:09
And not everybody wants to do that. Some people still want me to be Harry Potter and wave them out at once. Go away. Broke mine. And you'd have a lot of clients if you could do that. No, no, I wouldn't have one because I wouldn't dream of doing that for anybody. I mean, that's like picking up their case and carrying it for them. Yeah, that's true. They just have to deal with it later. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, it's, it's fascinating, right? Because

50:39
You very much lived what I talk to a lot of people about this, like, not, I don't know, maybe for you is a little different, but like a checklist life of like, I have to get a job and I have to pursue my passions and I'm gonna do these things and I don't want anyone to know the non quote unquote normal, you know, like, you know, which was normal, it was you. It's, you know, part of your life and your generations before you and your, and all that, but.

51:07
So many of us are conditioned by some rule that lives out there that no one actually made this rule, but we kind of feel that we must do certain things to get approval or to fit in. But then your body was like, hey, you're holding this in. You know, maybe that was, I mean, have you thought about, I'm sure you have, but like that your true purpose

51:36
of made that condition. I am a very stubborn person and one of the other things that I do is I'm a writer. In my 13th book I've got three bestsellers but I wasn't doing that then because I was earning very good money, I got a lovely dance thing going on, I got a great career and so it was you know you get you're supposed to write things, you're supposed to write things, you're supposed to write things and so I was there sort of like...

52:04
I'll do that in a minute. I'll do that later. I'll do that when I've got around to it, as we all say. And eventually, to talk total witchy language, the universe got really pissed off with me and sort of said, you're doing it now. We're stopping you. Right. It manifested into a physical ailment. You know, I just recently in June, an episode came out in which

52:33
someone, my guest, she worked in corporate America or globally, really, communications, PR, all these big accolades that the world would say, oh, yeah, you're amazing. She was constantly getting migraines to the point in which she got a migraine that she lost all of her motor skills and ended up in the ER. Through her healing journey, she started to embrace her intuition and her...

53:02
and her mediumship and realized that as the more, the more she leaned into that side, the fewer migraines she was getting. The fewer things that her body was manifesting. And so that's kind of why I was thinking, I wonder if you pushing and tamping that down kind of was like, no more. And then, you know, it gave you this ailment. Oh, you know, it's like.

53:29
somebody trying to plug a volcano and the volcano going, no, this is going to happen. No, I quite agree with you. And yes. And I mean, my two trans personal tutors sort of said, yeah, I think you've got it now. Yeah. You realize that now. Yeah. Fine. You're like, why, but come on, could have sent me a note, but you wouldn't have, you maybe wouldn't have listened because you were in.

53:59
I got the phone on the answer phone. I wasn't picking up. No, I mean, what a fascinating journey too. It's interesting that our body can kind of keep that score. I'm sure you've read that book or seen that book, The Body Keeps the Score, and how things that we either push aside or things that have happened to us eventually will, like you said, plugging that volcano, eventually something's gonna explode in some way.

54:28
Are you grateful for what's happened since and this journey that life has taken you on? Yes, I am. The only thing I regret is having my 25-year-old body that would do anything I asked of it. But, okay, it's in the memories. Yeah, you did it. You had it. If I could change anything, I would have that body with this brain and this consciousness.

54:56
Well, maybe in another life, you will get that opportunity to have all those experiences. You know, I, I, I'm so fascinated by your story. And you know what I love about this podcast is that I break the rules and I don't research and don't know enough. So that I can, you know, I just feel like I wish these were the conversations where two people could meet up in a coffee shop and just have these, these questions and these stories and these conversations that

55:25
We both brought our coffee, didn't we? Yeah, we're here. I need, mine's a tea. I need Lipton to sponsor me. But they're not going to. Are you listening Lipton? That's right. But I'm wondering if you could go back to the version of Elen that was dancing her heart out and coding and working with people. Is there anything that this version of you would want to tell her or do with her?

55:55
Stop hiding.

56:00
Yeah. Don't hide. Don't mask it. Would you have listened? Probably not. You'd be like, hide what? I'm not hiding anything. Exactly. Stupid old woman. What's she talking about? Yeah. You know, I asked this question and most people are like, you know, there's nothing really that that person would have listened to. We had to go through these moments. We had to hit these walls. We had to face these...

56:30
these particular circumstances and here we are. And isn't that the beauty of life, I think? I think so. I agree with you. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you being a part of the Life Shift podcast. It's been such a pleasure to learn about you and learn about your background and allowing me to ask questions or make assumptions from my own perspectives. I really appreciate that you allowed that and either laughed at it or...

56:59
or went along with it. I didn't laugh at it. I hope I laughed with you. And I thoroughly enjoyed being here, Matt. It was great. We will certainly share the links to your books and your services and everything in the show notes. Is there any place that is best for people to connect with you if they're interested in learning more about what you do? LinkedIn, really. I'm on there most. And most of my programs will come through there. So yeah, connect with me, LinkedIn.

57:30
And this is gonna come out after this fact, but it sounds like you're running like a workshop or something in July of 2023, right? Of something that you do? I am, but the most important thing is I'm running a, what I think is gonna be a rolling study group course for business people who want to learn how to use nice witchy magic in their business. Nice, I bet there's a.

57:59
There's certainly an intrigue in that, because I think even when you said, you're a witch, we're not taught the right words, we're not taught the right understanding of that. And I think a lot of people need more understanding of that, because I think we all just think of like what you said, we got rid of our broomsticks and we don't wear our pointed hats. But honestly, I think a lot of people, that's where it stops, that's what they understand. And so,

58:28
by you bringing this to the masses, I think that's important. I feel that's really important. That, I feel, is currently what I'm supposed to be doing and what I'm working at. So anybody interested, just type Elen Sentier in anything and it'll probably come up. Yeah, we will put that in the show notes too. We'll link them to your LinkedIn and they can find that information. I appreciate you. I appreciate you wanting to do this and being a part of my most fulfilling creative journey that I've ever been on. And...

58:58
I'm so thankful that you chose me. You chose me. So thank you. Thank you, Matt. And for those of you listening, if you're enjoying these episodes, as Elen knows, a rating and review are wonderful. Maybe if they do nothing else, they make us smile that day. And with that, we will be back next week with a brand new episode.

59:31
For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com