#320 How to unlock your creative potential through playfulness and the paradigm shift from productivity to being, with Alara Sage.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

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Please note that while an effort is made to provide an accurate transcription, errors and omissions may be present. No part of this transcription can be referenced or reproduced without permission.

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Alara Sage  0:00  
What really started to happen was this relaxation, right this oh my gosh, like life doesn't have to be so serious. I don't have to be so rigid and serious, I can relax and it really sparked my creativity. It really sparked my authenticity and my genius

Agi Keramidas  0:29  
you're listening to personal development mastery podcast, helping you take the simple actions to master personal development and create the life you gain for. I am your host, Agi Keramidas. And my mission is simple to inspire you to take action towards a purposeful and fulfilling life. In this podcast, I invite myself inside the minds of remarkable entrepreneurs, authors, thought leaders, spiritual teachers. So if you're ready to find practical insights that you can implement right now, make sure you follow the podcast and get the episodes as soon as they are released. In today's episode, my guest discusses how to unlock your creative potential through playfulness. She explains the paradigm shift from productivity to being and we also talk about Kundalini awakenings. Let's dive right in. Today, I am delighted to speak with Olara SADES Olara, you are known as the ecstatic life mentor, you are an intuitively gifted teacher and healer, who coaches soulfully and provocatively. And you're have over 15 years of experience. You're passionate about helping courageous female leaders and professionals who are highly successful but feel unfulfilled and disconnected from the true radiant self. A lot of Welcome to the show. It's such a pleasure to speak with you today.

Alara Sage  2:08  
I'm so grateful to be here.

Agi Keramidas  2:12  
I'm looking forward for this conversation and we're going to discuss playfulness, which is you know, a topic that I haven't discussed previously on the podcast. So I'm very much excited, you know, to go through that playfulness its importance, and how to connect with it because with for many of us it is something that it's kind of not part of our daily lives. I will say before we we go there's a lot of can you give us a key defining moment maybe in your journey that led you into becoming the person you are today talking about playfulness?

Alara Sage  3:01  
Absolutely. You know, I was living I was married, I had very young children had a nice big house, I was really living the quote unquote American dream we were you know, very comfortable financially. My, my husband at the time and myself we had a good relationship like we we were a good team. And we were very we worked very well together. And yet, I found myself really realising that even the things that I thought let me up the things that I thought brought me joy, you know, our that our hobbies and the things that we do just for our own pleasure. I realised were lacklustre. I realised that while I was doing them, I wasn't experiencing them fully. I wasn't engaged. I wasn't in a state of pleasure, I absolutely was not alive. And this was right around the time that I started my spiritual journey. And at that time, I was working on horses, I was doing physical therapy to horses. And horses have been an instrumental part of my life my whole life. They taught me so much about healing. And so one day, I got in the car to go to work on the horses. And I started driving and my higher self comes in and says, Oh, home three times. oming I knew what it was. It wasn't something that I practised, but I knew how to do it. So I was like, okay, so I took a nice deep breath, or, you know, all the way to the end three powerful, potent ohms and at the end of the third one, an energy shot from the base of my pelvis all the way through my body out my crown, and I went into a full body orgasm. Luckily, I was only driving on a back road 25 miles an hour, so I was able to pull over, give myself myself the space to really enjoy this process, you know, my whole body just lit. And the important thing to note, as at this time in my life, I was hardly orgasmic at all, orgasm hadn't been really a big part of my sexual experience. And I was at a point where I could orgasm, but it was like everything had to be just so and I had to really think about it and concentrate, it was very mental. I have never experienced a full body orgasm. And when it was done, and my body just started to relax, I was in this state of euphoria and bliss. Also something that I had never experienced. And for the rest of the day, I was in this energy, and I continued to drive down the road, I got to the freeway, and I was just dancing in my car, you know, like, barely able to sit at the seat, music blazing just just lit up from ear to ear. And I didn't know what happened to me. You know, it was just something that happened, it was spontaneous. And the following five to six months of my life was very, very erratic. At the time again, I didn't know what had happened to me. But what had happened to me was what's called a spontaneous kundalini awakening, or my Kundalini had shot through my body and out my crown. And it's, you know, spontaneous awakening. And what that does is the Kundalini is a creative life force energy, it's our healing energy. It dislodged released a lot of stored trauma and emotion. And so for the next five months, I was all over the place. One minute, I would be raging, like raging, and the next minute I would be crying with grief. And the next minute, you know, I would be laughing hysterically. And high Chuck did a couple of times, like, Am I going crazy. And my higher self was like, no, just keep breathing, just let all of the emotion out, express it to the best of your ability. This was also a very unfamiliar territory to me, because I had always thought of myself as being very emotionally stable, which just actually meant that I had just suppressed my emotions. And so this was it all coming out. And then right around five or six months, everything started to equalise. And as it happens, the universe brought me this book called Kundalini awakening. And the first chapter was spontaneous kundalini awakening. So I was shown what occurred to me and you know, not to say that it was all rainbows and butterflies from there on out, but it it woke me up to our true state of being it showed me what I was capable of, you know, in my state of being and it started me really on this journey of why am I not feeling that bliss? Why am I not in orgasm and you know, releasing a lot of shame and guilt, self hatred from my body and from my being, to where I am now, which is, you know, a very that's why I call myself the ecstatic life mentor because I do have a very orgasmic life now. And I'm not speaking sexually Of course, yes. It is very orgasmic sexually, but I experienced bliss, ecstasy, orgasm, full body orgasm. just in life in in the process of of creative, lifeforce energy moving through me, and my aliveness, my pleasure, my playfulness, is, is very much a part of my life. Now.

Agi Keramidas  9:10  
There was a question that came to my mind, instantly when you were talking about that experience you had in your car, driving at the time that you define this spontaneous kundalini awakening. Do you think? And the question and where I'm trying to figure out is whether you have any knowledge or understanding why it happened and why, you know, in this particular time, was there something that you did that led to that, or the term spontaneous means exactly that, that there is nothing that one can do to bring that?

Alara Sage  9:52  
That's such a wonderful question. And I'm going to answer it twofold. You know, in my I process I've had a lot of spontaneous occurrences where my higher self just guides me to the next steps, the next evolution of my consciousness. And they are often just kind of out of the box, you know, and I strongly believe in divine orchestration of our, of our personal path and our process, you know, things occur at the timing that really serves us simultaneously, I absolutely believe that these things are made available to us through the the availability, right of our process, and of our willingness and perhaps the things that we are practising and coming coming into, you know, I had started my spiritual practice. So I was meditating every day. And I was really tuning in to my body and my chakras. And you know, just practising I was I was diligently every single morning, I was being woken up at 3am. Okay, get out of bed, go meditate. And I would diligently go and sit, and it was a very beautiful time of the morning, you know, and I would, I would just make myself available. So I really think it's like those two things, you know, there is divine orchestration. And then there is our actions and our our willingness and our intention that that enables us on that journey.

Agi Keramidas  11:38  
Right. So that's great. Thank you for your answer. And I would like to bridge this now with playfulness. At what point did you realise the importance of playfulness in your journey? And what would happen there? What was the trigger for that?

Alara Sage  11:59  
Yes, the interesting thing was, is, you know, I can be a very serious person. So after that, kundalini awakening, I became very spiritually serious. And, you know, found myself meditating large quantities of the day, and just really diving in, in this in this very serious manner. And what I started to be shown is that I wasn't allowing my full again, engagement as a human being. And, you know, I really started this journey, of course, with my inner child. And the me that existed before I started to shut down from shame and guilt, and really connecting to her. And, you know, really experiencing my inner child is she just always wanted to play in some level, whether that was creative expression, playfulness, or like, let's literally just go have fun. Why are you being so serious? Why are you taking everything? So seriously, like, let's just go have fun. And, you know, it was my process of continuously saying yes to that, when my mind would want to say, no, no, no, come on, you need to meditate more, or you need to do this more with your business. You need to do this and giving myself permission to say yes, to say yes to my inner child saying, You know what, let's just go for a walk and really just engulf ourselves with with nature and take tiny little steps. And notice every tiny little detail. And if you ever walked with small children, but you don't get very far, because they stop at every single moment. There's an ant or they stop or they look at the ad, there's a flower, they stop and look at the villa. It's not about walking, right? It's about the enjoyment, the playfulness of the moment. And so I started saying yes to that. And what really started to happen was this relaxation, in my being, write this, oh, my gosh, like life doesn't have to be so serious. I don't have to be so rigid and serious. I can relax. And it really sparked my creativity. It really sparked my authenticity. And my genius.

Agi Keramidas  14:33  
You know, you said about when you got into your playful self, that your creativity ignited or you went to do your creative space. And I think that is easy to imagine, even for someone who hasn't really thought of it very much but my question is Uh, you know, for many of us, we are programmed very much that as you were as well, and you said about being serious and the need to be productive, and we are many people anyway are in even a culture could say of productivity, that kind of mindset that there is no time to play, it's to work hard and you know. So my question is, how can someone you know, start shifting their mindset and realising the importance of going into that playfulness mode? I hope my question is clear.

Alara Sage  15:49  
Yes, absolutely. It is clear. Yeah. So, before I answer the question, I want to just say, you know, what playfulness does for us is it really activates all three creator centres. So these three centres are our Sacral Chakra, our heart and our pineal gland. It has been said in spirituality and something that I resonate very, very strongly with and have experienced myself to some level, although I'm not claiming any mastery there is that when those three centres are Act are fully activated in human, are potential is is massive, really huge. This is when humans are really functioning at their, at their full potential, you know, it said we only are functioning at like 10%, right. So, playfulness activates these three centres, so it activates the sacral chakra, the sacral chakra is the seat of our power. It's the seat of our creative energy, or sexual energy, which is very highly creative, right? That's what sex is used for us to create physical form. And it's the centre of our childlike essence, our innocence, our connection, connection to other people connection to my mother, mother, Gaia. So that's the sacral chakra. So playfulness really enables us to be fully in the moment. And when we're fully in the moment that sacral chakra opens up. The heart chakra is the space of, of course, our love, our love of self, first and foremost our love of others, our compassion, of humanity, a compassion, you know, towards everything, our ability of acceptance, and our awareness of oneness, the awareness that we're all interconnected and interwoven. And when we are playful, we are in a natural state of joy. And so that activates our heart chakra. And lastly, our pineal gland, which is the centre of our ability to really utilise our mind, to create our reality, the pineal gland is both a receiver of light, aka information as well as a projector of light. And again, the mind is very, very powerful to create our physical reality. So when we are playful, we are activating our imagination. Right and, and our imagination is literally us seeing a timeline or version of ourself or of something that already exists in reality. And so when we are activating our imagination, we are further increasing our potentiality to create that and whether that's something very vague, like just joy and fun and love, or if it's something very, very precise, like you see yourself doing something or creating something in your life, then you are literally tapping into the mind doesn't know any difference between imagination and reality. It literally reacts chemically the exact same. So when we imagine something, we are eliciting chemical reactions in our body, as if we are experiencing it. So that is the power of playfulness as all three of those chakras are lit. And now you're not just in your creativity, or, you know, in your imagination, you're in all of it. It's all lit and and enlivened. So, now back to your question. It's really about permission, because as you so wonderfully put, we aren't trained. We are taught, you know, that playfulness is important. In fact, it's pretty quickly squashed in our society. You know, in schools, it's pretty quickly like, nope, let's start reading and writing. There are schools out I'm like the Waldorf school in the US that really further accentuates and elongates the creative process for children and holds back on things like reading. So that the the creativity and the childlike energy continues that most schooling, most public schooling, you know, just starts just starts you in on performance, right starts you in on productivity, get it done. You know, especially nowadays, kids are coming home with homework already in elementary school, you know, that didn't happen in my age, but it does now for my children. So all about just producing, producing. And, really, there's this belief that our success is in accordance with what we do, right, this doing to equate to success versus being to equate to success. And it is a mind shift, it is a paradigm shift that we are speaking of here today. And literally humanity is going through this paradigm shift. So I say this, because it's important to understand that this isn't an easy thing necessarily, to shift yourself out of. And you can most definitely do it. And it takes permission. When you are in that mode, and you are doing and doing and you just feel that moment, because you will, you'll feel that moment of like where your body, your mind starts to kind of tell you to stop, the signals are all there. And usually, we just push past them. And if you stop in that moment, and breathe into the body, just take a breath and pause. And really become available to yourself and say, I give myself permission right here right now to just step away. And initially, it might just be that just step away. And maybe just go and be walk outside, you know, open a book, just do something subtly different, that is non productive. Give yourself that permission. And every time you do that, you're going to start to cultivate this availability to yourself, that then what starts to arise is, oh, I really feel like jumping in my car, and driving down to the river for some reason, or I really feel like take some time out to just really presently play with my dog, you know, or I really feel like, you know, pulling out my canvas and throwing some paint on it. I really feel like putting on some music and just dancing, right you'll become available to that deeper intuitive hit that deeper intuitive notion of what your innate playfulness, desires to do to cultivate your creative potential. And then what starts to really happen is your productivity becomes so much more potent. Because when we push past those forces, it's like we're running on E. We're running on fumes of creativity, running on fumes of mental clarity, creative clarity, and we're just producing and it's just block production, bla production was the more that we give ourselves, these breaks, the more that when we come back in, we're refreshed we're available, our centres or three creative centres are activated. And now we can really bring it in. You know, the big corporations are starting to realise that Google Apple they're starting to make little early like play centres in their buildings so that their people can go and just be and kind of just have some fun and then go back to work because they understand the importance of what I'm speaking of here today.

Agi Keramidas  24:09  
I will take a quick break for a very important message. Your ongoing support as my podcast listener means the world to me. That's why I'm extending a special invitation to 10. Listeners like you to join me for a 30 minute zoom call and discuss your podcast experience. And to express my gratitude, I will give you a copy of my first book which is ready but not yet published. So you will be one of the very first people to read it. Don't miss out on this opportunity to connect with me and exchange insights and read my book before it's available publicly. Click the link in the show notes to arrange a call or email me I get a tiger amateurs.com I will be looking forward to connecting with you. Now let's go back to the episode one Thank you for this very comprehensive answers Olara with the playfulness, opening up the three creative centres, and I really enjoyed listening to your description.

Speaker 2  25:18  
I wanted to, to expand a little bit more on what you were just saying now about, you know, incorporating more playfulness into our daily life. And you mentioned about some corporate settings.

Agi Keramidas  25:34  
Let's talk about different situation, let's say someone or people who spent much of their time working at home doing something that is online or entrepreneurs. Can you recommend maybe some technique or a tool that one can use to start having more of these practices because you give some wonderful examples, you know, go without, with your dog or go to the river or things like that. But my question isn't, I hope I'm explaining this clearly. To you, how someone who has lost to a large extent this playfulness inside or it's locked, as you say, how can they shift enough so that they can start you know, when that desire comes, should go to the would like to go to the river, not to suppress it with the usual, you know, mind excuses, but to actually take the decision and go into that playfulness, whatever it is, that comes to his or her mind.

Alara Sage  26:56  
Yes, and, and I hope I'm answering this because, you know, it is a bit of a personal and, and vague terminology, playfulness, right? Like, what does it mean? And so I do my best to try to bring it into a structure that people can really understand. And again, you know, I would say that the first thing is to set the intention, right, literally start to say to yourself, I desire to be more playful, or I desire to experience more playfulness in my life. You know, setting intention is so powerful and potent. And if you wake up every morning, and you say that out loud. I can guarantee you, you will be given opportunity throughout the day. Okay, so then let's go into that right. So first one setting the intention. Second one, yeah, the signals comes up, right, you feel it or you sense it. Pause, Stop what you're doing. Bring your awareness to your body. And breathe into your body breathe down into your belly, into your diaphragm. Just take three nice deep breaths. Okay, when we take those three nice, deep breaths into our diaphragm, we start to activate our parasympathetic nervous system, our rest and digest, we start to relax, we start to let go. Okay, so when you breathe in, and I like to recommend that you breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth to take these three nice complete breaths. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Sighing is also a really powerful thing, because when you sigh ah, again, you are speaking to your mind. Let go, relax. Enjoy, right. So this is the first trigger is to pause and breathe into your body. Now you have created already a chemical again, chemical reaction in the body that the body is already saying. Yeah, let's relax and have some fun. Okay, I'm not saying that you're there yet. But you started the process. Okay, now it is about permission. And this is totally something you have to do. The only way we can ever do anything, is by giving ourselves the permission to take the action. But I promise you if you pause and take the breaths first. And even if you don't know what that action is, but you give yourself permission, I give myself permission right here right now to step away and become available to this playfulness. We speak this out loud Our voice is so incredibly powerful to us. This is one of the things I teach, I teach four keys to unlocking our genius than we really are speaking to ourselves, yes, I give myself permission right here right now I'm going to step away, and just be available. So, step one intention, waking up everyday setting that intention. Letting go of what you think the outcome will be what you think playfulness wants to look like for you just simply setting the intention to taking that pause and taking three nice, deep, complete breaths into the body. Three, giving yourself permission, stepping away, making yourself available. If you were to really follow through with those three steps, it will start to happen for you.

Agi Keramidas  30:55  
Your answer was everything I was hoping for, and more. So thank you for the way you explain the three steps. I believe it's, it's very practical as well. And it's very valuable for anyone to do in it gives like completely a Brexit down. So thank you for that. A lot. I have a few last questions to ask you to wrap things to wrap this conversation up. Before I do. Would you like to share with the listeners that has been fascinated by what you've been saying? What is the best place for them to connect with you? Where do you want to direct him or head?

Alara Sage  31:46  
Yes, absolutely. So they can find me a website, www dot Alaris sage.com. And literally, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, it's all Olara safe. So I'm quite easily found on the internet. And I always invite people just simply to reach out on any of the platforms or through email, because I do truly love to connect to people.

Agi Keramidas  32:13  
Thank you. And I have two final questions I always ask them of my guests. And this actually has kind of become a kind of a tradition really, because I'm over 300 episodes on the podcast now. But anyway, that aside, the first one I always ask is What does personal development mean to you?

Alara Sage  32:42  
To me, it means developing our human to really what we are here uniquely to create and to experience so clarity both in what we are here to create and clarity and what we are here to experience and the development of both of those unfolding.

Agi Keramidas  33:08  
And hypothetically, if you could go back in time and meet your 18 year old self what's one piece of advice you would give her?

Speaker 3  33:18  
Of course I would tell her to not be so serious and have more fun my love go play my love have fun. That's what I would tell her

Agi Keramidas  33:31  
somehow I was expressed

Agi Keramidas  33:38  
Allah I want to thank you very much for a truly fascinating conversation. I enjoyed it very much. And I want to wish you all the very best with your mission, which is so important and the people in the women you empower. We were saying it before we started recording these episodes that it would be appropriate to finish with an activation that you will do so I will just leave give you the microphone to wrap it up for any parting words if you have to, and then I'm looking forward to hearing the the activation you have for us.

Alara Sage  34:27  
Yes, thank you so much for having me. It was truly, truly truly a delight. Okay, so in the perfection of everything that came together today, I would like to bring you into an activation of permission. So I invite you to place your left hand over your sacral chakra so that's about two inches below your belly button. You don't have to have perfection. Just kind of Intuit where that is and place your right hand over your heart chakra. are right there in the centre of your chest. Go ahead and just close your eyes and bring your awareness here to your hands. And breathe into your body and just feeling how your hands, Move with your breath. Feeling and noticing the fluidity of breath coming in your body and leaving your body as we invite the bodies to relax, as we invite the bodies to let go, go ahead and take a nice deep breath into the nose, out through the mouth. And we're going to use your voice. I want you to acknowledge that right now you're going to speak to yourself, you're going to repeat the words that I say out loud to yourself. And I invite you to speak with presence and conviction. Let's take one more nice deep breath in through the nose, out through the mouth. And you're going to repeat after me. You have permission and breathe into your body just noticing what happens here what happens. We're gonna say it again with more certainty really gifting yourself this beautiful activation, you have permission and burries. Whatever you're feeling is perfect. Whatever you're experiencing is perfect. And already, whether you feel it or not, you are activating your energy, your body and your being is lighting up with the potential of this permission. We're going to do one more and we're just going to bring in playfulness. I want you to know that you can give yourself permission for anything. So take another nice deep breath and we're asking the bodies release any resistance out through the breath. Releasing On the exhale any resistance? Yes, yes, yes, yes. Beautiful. bringing your awareness to your hands, making sure you're here with your body as your body is shifting and transitioning as we speak. Beautiful. Okay, we're going to take another nice deep breath, breathing all the way down to your left hand, bringing your belly out as you inhale and exhaling out of the mouth and repeating after me, you have permission to be playful

Alara Sage  38:47  
just be with your hands be with your body be with this beautiful gift you are giving yourself right here right now. So this practice is yours, my love that is gifted to you. You can bring this in any moment anytime. Where you're uncertain if you can give yourself permission uncertain if you can take that step towards your playful self. Just do exactly as we did today. Just touch your hands to your body. Breathe into your body and speak out loud to yourself. Thank you so much to all of you for being a part of this process. I love you all.

Agi Keramidas  39:47  
Thank you for listening. your ongoing support as my podcast listener means the world to me and I value your input in shaping the show's future. That's why I'm extending In a special invitation to 10 listeners like you to join me for a 30 minute zoom call, and discuss your podcast experience, your insights will play a vital role in making the show even more tailored to your needs and serve you better. And to express my gratitude, I will gift you a copy of my first book, which is ready but not yet published. So you will be one of the very first people to read it. Don't miss out on this opportunity to connect with me exchange insights and read my book before it's available publicly. Click the link in the show notes to arrange our call or email me agi@agikeramidas.com

I appreciate the opportunity to have these more personal communication with you and I will be looking forward to speaking with you -  until then, stand out don't fit in!