I hope this episode gets you more curious about how your unconscious choices contribute to the patterns in your life. These unconscious influences affect all aspects of your life experience—from your health to your career to your relationships. And more. 

 

Obviously, there are a lot of factors that we cannot control—like the circumstances we were born into, and our genetics. 

 

We cannot control everything. However, bringing consciousness to your unconscious decisions, stories, and mindset can transform your life. 

 

Jozi Radus, the podcast guest of this episode, has helped me with meaningful breakthroughs so I'm delighted to introduce her to you! 

Jozi is the creator of the Unconscious Mapping System (UMS), which is a method that she designed to help clients transform their unconscious patterns into conscious choices. Her intention is to empower and liberate you through her method so that you can elevate your life experience.

 

One thing that struck me as particularly helpful is when Jozi points out that one way to discover your unconscious patterns is to notice your "Always" statements—like, "I'm always attracted to someone who isn't good for me, or I'm always the one cleaning up, or I'm always overlooked, or I always feel sick after eating at the movie theater." 

 

 

Looking for statements with Always and Never has really helped me for both myself and as a mom. I've noticed my daughters often using them. For example, I often hear, "She's always mean to me, or she never cleans up, or she always ruins my playdates..." 

 

I know that raising my daughters' curiosity about how they consciously or unconsciously co-create their experiences will empower them to steer their trajectories towards their desired destinations. And I know that this can help you as it has helped me.

 

 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:04:13] [Reading an email from a friend who introduced Sophia to Jozi.

I've been working with this amazing, amazing woman, Jozi. She has a healing modality called unconscious mapping system that taps into your unconscious mind and higher self to reveal places that need healing. I have had breakthrough after breakthrough. And aside from the system being pure magic, Jozi herself is a special presence of unconditional love and warmth. Honestly, I have not had such a profound journey in a long time.

Jozi Radus: [00:04:46] Beautiful...

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:04:48] I got this email and I thought, I need to I need to meet Jozi! And it's been... I don't even have the words to describe how you've helped with so much transformation. 

You've never explained to me the process. I'm so excited to talk to you about your method—the Unconscious Mapping System—and hear more about your background and how you came to this work. 

Jozi Radus: [00:05:16] Well, it's just so wonderful to be here. You know, it's been a long journey of developing in this capacity to dig deeply into the unconscious mind and to reveal what's going on underneath and learn how to turn the light on these patterns that are really, most of the time running our lives in a way that we are completely unaware of. 

So the work that I do is just honestly, it's such a privilege. So I always say, you know, it's like we go into the dark woods together and we have no idea what we're going to find. But we hold hands and we go into the dark woods of the unconscious and we just see what is there. 

Once we know what the pattern is, once we can bring light to what it is that's really going on in our unconscious mind and we raise it up to our consciousness, then we liberate ourselves to make choices about what are we going to do about this particular pattern that we have. 

And all of us have these unconscious patterns.

Most of our unconscious patterns or most of our belief systems began when we were really young. All of us have experienced trauma, whether they're trauma with a big T or trauma with a small T. All of us on the planet have experienced trauma. And so most of our unconscious patterns or unconscious belief systems develop when we are very young and something happens to us and we don't understand what it is and we can't understand why. 

Our unconscious belief systems are absolutely brilliant. They actually help us to cope and to get through to survive through some mostly very, very difficult situations. 

And then it's like a record, you know, it's on replay. And so while the original belief system was developed to really help us get through a very difficult and very traumatic period that we most possibly would not have managed without that belief system, that unconscious belief system then continues to run in our lives over and over again. So when we get the courage, because I really think it takes courage, it takes a lot of guts to really look into our unconscious belief system and reveal what it is that we are believing. 

But when we are able to get that insight and understand that now we have a choice, once we see what the belief system is and we realize we no longer need it, we are not in places of survival anymore. 

Most of us are now adults that are out of very traumatic situations. And so now we get to make choices about what we believe. Are we going to continue to live our lives according to an unconscious belief system that we developed when we were really young just to help us survive? Or are we actually going to face the pain? 

A lot of it is around facing the pain, facing the pain of what happened to us, facing that pain, and then making new decisions and realizing that we honestly do have the power. We have the power to change our belief systems and to really impact our realities and change our lives. 

I've been involved in healing in some form or another for my entire life. It was about 30 years ago I met Margaret Fields Keene, who through a near-death experience, she developed a system. She developed a system that really helps us to tap into our unconscious patterns and helps us to understand what's going on below the surface.

It was a real honor and a privilege to study with her, to learn about this tool that could help us really dig deeper into our unconscious minds and liberate ourselves through understanding. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:09:10] How did you meet Margaret? 

Jozi Radus: [00:09:11] I was already a social worker when I met Margaret.

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:09:15] Were you a social worker in South Africa? 

Jozi Radus: [00:09:18] I was. I studied social work in South Africa. I graduated in 1991, a long time ago. 

And then I practiced social work in various different settings. I did some really traditional social work in child welfare with a lot of underprivileged people in South Africa, street children, and various other things.

And then I think my longest social work position was with hospice, where I really learned a lot about death and dying and facing loss. I think that was really one of my longest and one of my deepest pieces of training. 

Actually, before I started working at hospice, I met Margaret Fields queen. I was young. I was in my 20s. I was very dedicated to healing and helping people. But I was also kind of a free spirit at that time. And I was living in a community of people. And I met Margaret. 

She was actually an American who came to South Africa. She was a very interesting woman because before she came into this work, she was a Baptist priest's wife and she lived in rural Virginia. She had absolutely no idea about alternative healing or spirituality in this kind of form that we know today. She really was a Baptist priest, wife in a very traditional way. 

But she had a near-death experience. She had a blood clot that shot her lung and she died. And in this near-death experience, her entire perspective on life transformed.

So when Margaret came back to Earth... First of all, she had to heal herself. She was very, very ill. And so she began healing herself. And then she just started pretty much downloading all this information about healing. And it became her dedication to bring her work to the earth. 

Needless to say, her relationship with her priest husband didn't last very long because when he would come home from the parish instead of dinner lying on the table, Margaret would have people lying on the table.

So anyway, Margaret came to South Africa to work with people that were less privileged than herself. And so that's where I met her and I began working with her. 

We worked a lot in church environments with people that were less privileged in kind of real low socioeconomic areas. And Margaret's philosophy, which just made so much sense to me, was that the most natural state of being is one of harmony and alignments. We are perfect and that's the way we are meant to be. 

However, because of what happens to us on this Earth plane—and not only what happens to us in this lifetime, but possibly what's happened to our families—that can intergenerational pattern or even possibly a past life, we have these traumas that make us forget about our perfection.

And so Margaret's work is all about making us remember our perfection. And so Margaret's work, which really helps us to tap into this, the unconscious, helps us to find where we are out of alignment. Her concept is that it helps us to remember our state of perfection. So we will reveal something, we will uncover something, and then we'll remind ourselves of what our most natural state of being is. So that's Margaret's work. 

And I had the great privilege of actually living with her for a while, which was really interesting. It was amazing because she was extremely sensitive. And you'll relate to this with your work: She could have absolutely no toxins in her environment whatsoever because she was so highly sensitive from this near-death experience. We could only use bicarbonate soda to wash our clothes. We couldn't use any spices in our food. We had to use that baking soda to brush our teeth. It was a very clean environment. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:13:09] Was she that sensitive before the near-death experience? 

Jozi Radus: [00:13:14] She wasn't. Really, it was from her experience of what she called the oneness. She said once you've really felt the oneness, things around...you become very... You became very sensitized. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:13:26] Wasn't she dead for a while? Seven-minutes? 

Jozi Radus: [00:13:28] Yeah, she was. She was dead for quite a long time. During that time, she experienced a connection with the one. Yeah, she calls it the oneness. 

She taught not only the system that I use, which helps us to tap the unconscious, she also taught a process which we call the quest process. It's Margaret's experience of dying. It's a board game. And on this board game, it's really Margaret's full experience of dying. So when you come in, the first place you visit is the tunnel. And you do this full life review where you look at your whole life, like watching a movie. And this game board actually takes you through these different phases of what she experienced when she died. 

So you go into the tunnel, then you go into a place of love where you feel this incredible love, you feel trust, you move into a place of the light, and then you move into a place of recognizing perfection, recognizing perfection of yourself and of everything. And then you move into a place where you're what she calls the gate to the oneness. And then you enter into the oneness where you actually receive a training program, you are given your assignments.

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:14:48] She experienced all this in the few minutes that she was dead? 

Jozi Radus: [00:14:53] Yes. Well, I think time is a totally different experience when you're not on this plane.

So she received her assignment and then she literally came to Earth to carry out her assignment. So this board game, which is one of the processes that I share, is something that we can use for any issue, anything that we're stuck with.

Margaret said that you don't have to die to find perfection.

So we can take any issue that we're stuck with and we can actually move it through this process to a place that she described as holding the perfection. So that is just one really interesting process. And that process is also great to do with couples or with groups. It really helps you to understand what the other person is experiencing and also get very deep insight into the way that you're moving with a particular issue. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:15:42] How did Margaret create this mapping system or this board game?

Jozi Radus: [00:15:47] There's a lot of mystery really in this. There are two separate processes that I use. The board game is one of the processes and then the system is another process.

Margaret created a system that has all these different indicators. So we would scan the entire being to look at where the issue is that's out of alignment, so to speak. So we look for stress, we look for anything that's out of alignment. We'll actually scan the whole system and we'll look at, Is it a physical issue? Is it a nutritional issue? Is it an emotional issue? Is a spiritual? Is it electrical? Is it to do with toxins? Is it to do with security? Is it to do with energy, negative energy or positive energy? Is it an environmental issue? 

Margaret created a system that helps us scan the entire body. In each session, we will have the healing priority. So in each session, the system will help us focus on a particular area that's out of alignment, and then we'll work towards realigning and restoring harmony back into each person. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:16:54] In my experience with you, you would show me some gestures with fingers and I would have to imitate them and that would reveal things to you. So how do those hand gestures connect to the mapping system?

Jozi Radus: [00:17:10] For each one of the directional indicators is a different hand gesture. While you're imitating my hand gestures, I can see if it is physical, nutritional... Is it emotional?

And while you are copying my hand gestures, I'm testing to see whether a weakness comes up. I check all the different indicators. I often say to people in the sessions, Please excuse me, because I'm going to be mumbling to myself, and testing, and writing a bunch of stuff down. But I'll tell you everything that comes up.

So I basically use Margaret's system to scan the whole being, and then we will get a healing priority that we can work with.

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:17:55] So are you reading our gestures by how our fingers... 

Jozi Radus: [00:18:01] That's a very good question, because often clients say, Oh, no, Am I doing it right? Or, Am I holding it right? It's really got nothing to do with that. I could use a pendulum... I could use kinesiology... I could actually use kinesiology to test the different gestures... to see where there's a weakness. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:18:20] What is kinesiology?

Jozi Radus: [00:18:21] Kinesiology is muscle testing. So I'll test my muscles to see where the weakness is. 

But you could use a pendulum, you could use dowsing rods, you could use anything... well, not anything. Let's say those few things that I've described to really see where there's a so-called like a weakness, an out of alignment. I'm testing my muscles while you're holding different hand positions to see where the weakness comes from. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:18:47] But you're sensing the weakness based on my hand gestures, right? 

Jozi Radus: [00:18:51] Yeah. But based on a connection, you know, basically... 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:18:55] Based on how your connection to... 

Jozi Radus: [00:18:58] You... 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:18:59] My hand gestures—whether it's my hand gestures or something else? 

Jozi Radus: [00:19:04] I can try to explain it. But there's so much mystery that's involved that I don't even really understand with my rational mind... 

We enter into this sort of mystical space together. And then using Margaret's system, I will test each of the positions that you will hold, and I'll find a weakness in the position. 

We might get an age, for example. It might come up as an emotional release and I'll say give us an age. And we'll say. Age 10. So then I'll say to you, Can you talk to me about anything that comes to mind from age 10? 

And so within the process, certain memories may come to mind. We might just begin talking. Through the talking and reflecting... Or, possibly, maybe you don't remember anything. People are like, Oh, I have no memory. And then we'll just look, we'll just say, Well, where did you live? Let's describe where you were living or who you were living with. 

And as we proceed into this process, these unconscious thoughts will begin to come up into the person's mind. And through the process of deep listening and really paying attention and being connected to my clients, we can begin to see a pattern that's emerging. 

Because I really don't know what will happen. In each person, it's so different and so individual. But we may find the first time we ever began running a pattern that believed that we were anything less than perfect.

So the first time maybe we'll get an age—age five or age two. And that may have been the first time that we ever realized that there was something not 100 percent perfect, that we had to create a belief system to help us survive. 

So it's really through this exploration... Margaret's system gives us a kind of container in which to really explore deeply into our unconscious minds, to understand what's happening in our unconscious mind so that we can really liberate ourselves to make different choices. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:21:02] I know from experience that it has created breakthroughs and it has been transformative. But, I guess I'm wondering, Do my unconscious patterns affect my hand gestures, which you can see? Or, are you saying that as I do the hand gestures, you get information in a way that you can't explain? It's not like you're getting information from watching my hand gestures. Is it more energetic or intuitive feedback? 

Jozi Radus: [00:21:32] So you will hold the hand gestures and I'll test. So I test my muscles... 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:21:38] You test your muscles?

Jozi Radus: [00:21:40] My muscles. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:21:41] So you're almost like a medium or you channel... reacting to my reaction to the hand gestures? 

Jozi Radus: [00:21:49] Exactly. So you're holding the hand gestures that I'm testing. I'm channeling to see where there is stress or weakness in your system. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:22:00] So when I do the hand gestures, you feel stress or a release or a block?! That's amazing! 

Jozi Radus: [00:22:11] Yeah, well, it's a privilege. Honestly, it is. I really do feel that. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:22:16] I'm wondering what your feelings are. So if you feel a block or you feel a block of pain, do you feel pain? 

Jozi Radus: [00:22:23] It comes through in kind of like a deep understanding of a person's situation. It's almost like a merging with that other person. And then I'll just get a deep sense of what this person is experiencing, or what they may be feeling, it may be thoughts... I might just get questions that would help that person to really understand... I think that the work is something between... What I've been told is that the work is something between a kind of reading and therapy. We do get some inspirational messages that will come through, that can help a person to get deeper insight. 

Also, I guess my therapeutic background helps us to get into practices that we can then use on a daily basis. So I think it's kind of a combination of channeling insights and then also therapy, really doing the work. 

Because there are really no shortcuts. I've really realized that in my life, and I'm sure you would agree with me, is that in any self-work, there are really no shortcuts. I mean, you know, you can have a reading and you can get an amazing inspiration, but you still have to do the work to change your patterns.

Most of the work that I do, that I've discovered, is that we need to reconnect with ourselves. We need to learn self-acceptance, learn unconditional love for ourselves, learn how to let go of belief systems that keep us small, keep us disempowered.

Often we will maintain a belief system that keeps us small because we really are so afraid of, What does it mean if I'm fully empowered? What does it mean if I really get in touch with this incredible, awesome human being that I am—like, what are the consequences of that in my life? And so very often we have to look at that. You know, we really have to work through that together. So while there is this kind of inspiration that comes through, there's also, like I said, the kind of daily work that we have to do to really make these changes possible in our lives. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:24:22] It seems counterintuitive that it would be so hard for many people to embrace their power, their perfection—like being imperfectly perfect or perfectly imperfect. It's so hard for human beings. And you would think that that would be our default mode, that it would be easier to feel like we're perfect as we are and to be full of self-love. But it's really hard. 

Jozi Radus: [00:24:53] It's really hard. Mainly it's hard because, in order to really tap into our power, we have to come to terms with pain. We have to come to terms with the emotional pain and loss and trauma. I would say that is one of the hardest things or one of the biggest sort of frontiers that we as human beings really have to learn about, is learn how to tolerate our emotional bodies and how to learn how to tolerate discomfort and pain because people are very afraid of emotional pain. 

We're very afraid that if we really take a look at what happened to us, that we will drown in our pain or we won't be able to cope. So we adopt belief systems that keep us separate from this emotional pain. 

I really do love the work of Carl Jung because Carl Jung works very much with the unconscious. And recently I just came across a quotation which really made so much sense to me, where he says that neurosis is actually a substitute for legitimate suffering. 

And so very often we will stay up in a space of, like, anxiety or neurotic thoughts or being neurotic in a way to avoid the really deep pain that happened, the sort of deeper more, what he calls, legitimate suffering. And I think that that's true because in order to really reconnect with our true power, we have to walk through the doorway of pain. And we have to also confront our shadows, confront the parts of ourselves that are hidden, the parts of ourselves that we don't know about or we're afraid of. 

Once we confront our shadow, we confront our pain, that's the journey to wholeness. Loving ourselves is not as easy as a superficial love for the self. We're talking about deep love, we're talking about unconditional love, which embraces the parts of ourselves that are maybe not acceptable according to societal norms or what our parents taught us. 

There's this bunch of things about us that are hidden, that we were afraid of. And it's only really when we confront those parts of ourselves and we can really love—when I use the word love, I mean a sort of unconditional acceptance, a deep love, an unconditional love.

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:27:03] ... to not reject or alienate or exile parts of us that we don't want to look at.

For a lot of people, the idea of our subconscious or unconscious is really vague. What would you say to those people about how much influence our unconscious has on our lives? 

Jozi Radus: [00:27:26] That's a great question. Most of us can pretty much experience our unconscious mind in action. So whether it's in our work life, or in our romantic life, or in any aspect of our life, we will notice that we always experience the same thing. Like, Why is it that I'm always attracted to somebody who is not good for me? Or, I always find myself being less than prosperous? You know, it's these sort of Always statements. 

No matter how much we try this time, this time it's going to be different and I'll get a new job. And I start off in a particular way. And lo and behold, six months down the line, I'm in exactly the same position as I was in the previous job. And I'm always doing everything for everybody. I'm always the one that's staying late at work, and I'm always the one that picks up the slack. 

And why is that? Well, that's because of our unconscious patterns. It's because of something that we believe about ourselves. 

When I say that these unconscious patterns are helpful to us when we are younger... So, for example, let's say that example of like I'm always the one that always works harder than everybody else. I'm the one who picks up the slack. So that could have been a situation where a person was in a family where there may have been conflict, and there may have been marital conflict between the parents. 

And so the child may have taken on the role of like, I'm going to make it better. So I'm going to do everything around this house because she or he felt we feel everything even when we don't understand it. 

When we're children, we feel all the feelings that are around in our households. We might not understand what's going on. Let's say there was conflict between the mom and dad. And we don't understand that. We have no concept of that developmentally. We can't be expected to understand that. But we feel all these emotions and we feel this pressure on this conflict. So we decide, If I do everything in the house, I'm going to make everybody happy. 

So there's sort of like this fawning response of like, I'm going to please everybody. I'm going to take the tension away from this because this feels like if I let this happen, something bad is going to happen. And I start I feel my power like I can make a decision that I will take this on and I will make everybody happy. 

And so this person might begin to be somebody who always takes the dishes off the table and washes the dishes and always does everything for everybody trying to kind of bring peace or bring happiness into the home.

Most of the time that didn't work, but that didn't make that child in that moment feel like there was something that they could do with these unexplainable feelings that were around in the house. So it gave them a sense of power, like, I can do something to make this better. I can become a good person. I could become a helpful person. 

And so later on in their lives, they're in this repeat pattern. So they always the one that's always so helpful, always so kind, always doing everything for everybody and it feels like you can't change. 

So that is just an example of how our unconscious mind is running our lives. And we don't realize it. We don't realize it until we go back and we look and we go, Oh, wow, when I was ten, this is what happens. And I remember, I remember always being the one. Oh, no, I'll do it. 

And so once we realized that, we realize the impact of our unconscious minds... We are so incredibly powerful. Our minds are so incredibly powerful, the unconscious minds because they are creating everything that we see. 

Also, what I want to say about the unconscious mind because your question was, How do we understand how the unconscious creates our reality? It's not only in our individual lives, it's also in our collective experience, because the more of us that believe a particular thing, the more it is true. 

It works in advertising. In the most mainstream reality, we see how advertisers will make us believe something. It can be anything like, Oh, we need to... let's use a silly example, like deodorant.

In years gone by, before we were so-called civilized and whatever, we didn't use deodorant. But now it's a need. We believe that we need it. Marketing works on convincing the unconscious mind of something. And the more of us that believe that, the more it becomes a true reality. So it works in our individual lives, but it also works in a collective sense. I'm not sure if that example was a good one, if that made sense. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:31:47] That's very helpful. It makes me wonder what your thoughts are on reality. What is reality when it's really just what we individually or collectively think or believe? 

Jozi Radus: [00:32:01] I do believe that... 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:32:04] We are always co-creating our reality, right?

Jozi Radus: [00:32:07] Absolutely. We are co-creating our reality. And our power lives in liberating our consciousness so that we can make choices and that we are not living on default—based on what we decided a long time ago or maybe even a belief system that we adopted. So, yes, reality is our collective consciousness that determines reality. 

So if we are talking about creating collective change, to me, the only avenue to creating collective change is for each one of us individually to grab hold of ourselves and explore deeply our own consciousness and our own thoughts, because when we liberate ourselves, we open up the possibilities for a new reality. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:32:49] Earlier you mentioned the emotional body. For those who don't understand what that is, what would you want them to know about our emotional body?

Jozi Radus: [00:33:00] We are made up of rational aspects and we are made up of those aspects that are not of the mind—that is a feeling body. And almost 50 percent of us is this emotional, so-called irrational... that it doesn't follow logic, and mind and body exist in a different realm.

All of us feel emotions. We get upset. We feel angry, we feel sad. We feel overwhelmed. All of us experience emotions. But we haven't yet, as humanity, learned how to harness this incredible power of emotions. We are afraid of emotions. We are afraid of being overwhelmed by emotions because we actually don't have any tools. We don't know how to understand our emotions and to allow ourselves to feel. Some of us are better at sweeping them under the carpet and pretending that they're not a big deal. 

The thing about emotions is that they don't go anywhere. They just store up. You can sort of sweep your feelings under the carpet and carry on, pretend that it's not a big deal. But eventually that sort of feeling—cabinet, so to speak, or those compartments inside ourselves—will become full, and then it will have to come out. 

For example, if you're the kind of person that always says, Oh, no, it's not a big deal, it's not a big deal. But then you know that saying, The final straw that broke the camel's back... So it could be that small little thing... Somebody is driving on the road and they cut you off and suddenly this huge rage comes out and we experience these phenomena like road rage. Now, that rage is most probably something that has been stored up. Since that person was a child, they've never been able to actually express their feelings. And so it may seem inappropriate. How can that person be so angry or so sad about something kind of seemingly insignificant? Well, it's because that person is fully emotionally.

And so we have to learn how to allow ourselves to empty our emotions and to learn from our emotions because our emotional body gives us so much information about who we are. Our emotional body is all tied up with our intrinsic, intuitive, instinctual self. 

Fear tells us that there's something we must look out for. If we're excited about something, or something fills us with enthusiasm, that gives us information that this is something for us.

The thing with feelings as well is that you can't selectively block feelings. So you can't say, Oh, I only want to experience the happy, good, enthusiastic feelings. When you block feelings, you block all feelings. Then we become disconnected. And a lot of us will start to feel empty, and depressed, and lost because our emotional bodies have all that information for us. 

I always say, Feelings are like water. They're in motion. They need to move. 

And feelings will move. They'll pass. 

The only thing we have to be concerned about with feelings is if we block or if we stop them. Because if we build a dam, then we can drown because then the water will get too full. But if we learn how to just open and allow the feelings to move, it will go. It will change. 

When you see a child getting angry, for example, they're angry for a couple of minutes—maybe really intense. Saying, How could you steal my toy? They may get so angry and they let it out. Then a minute later, they're laughing because they emptied that anger drawer. 

But, we as adults, we store it, and we store it, and we store it. And then something happens. And it's like a huge explosion. So we have to learn again to allow ourselves to unlock this incredible part of ourselves, which has so much to give us, to help us to get to know who we are.

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:36:55] I've never heard feelings described as water, but that's perfect. That's so helpful. I actually have a thing with blocked water, like I don't want anything still wet put in drawers because bad things grow from trapped water. 

Jozi Radus: [00:37:14] One hundred percent. So true. We have to give ourselves a chance to let that water flow, to dry after. I love that. I love what you say. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:37:25] So by the time clients come to you, they are prepared to do their work. Do you feel that once someone has arrived at that point, where they're feeling like, OK, I'm ready to face my shadows, does change happen pretty quickly? 

Jozi Radus: [00:37:49] OK, so that's such a good question. First of all, you can get a lot out of just one session. But I always say that you should have a follow-up, at least to integrate. So I really prefer it if you have two sessions.

But I do think you can get a lot out of one section because it will bring awareness to parts of yourself that you didn't even know about. And you really can, if you're committed, you can actually make real changes from one session. 

But, to make any real significant change—because our unconscious belief systems are kind of habitual, we just so used to... It's like we have these grooves in our mind that we are just so used to responding in a certain way. 

It takes some significant work and commitment to want to really change the track of your life. I do think that you can get a lot from a one-off session, maybe with just a follow-up because I really like to help with integration. But I think if you really want to do the work... 

With most of my clients, I see them for at least four sessions. 

Most of my clients, quite honestly, will end up doing a lot more work with me, because once we start to uncover what's really going on, we can find so much to grow from. There are so many layers. It's like an onion. I'm sure you've heard that description before. It's like once you start doing your self-work and you take off a layer, then there's another layer. 

I have clients that I've seen for years. And those people will remain working with me... maybe as an alternative to therapy, or as therapy, or maybe as a combination with therapy. But all of my clients make significant changes. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:40:13] So my experience with you was that I mean, yes, becoming aware of something that you haven't been aware of that contributes to a pattern is hugely valuable. But then how that applies—into your daily life, your relationships, these choices you've just been making without much thought— it was so helpful to talk to you several times over time so I could apply the awareness to how I actually live my life. I found one session was incredibly helpful. But then how to actually apply it to break patterns that I wanted to break, it was wonderful to have continued support.

Jozi Radus: [00:41:05] Absolutely. And most of my clients really want to do the work. And, as you say, that's where the bravery really comes in. It's like, How am I going to make this change every day in my life—in my daily life, in my relationships, in the way that I live, in the choices that I make. That's when it becomes real. That's when we really start seeing changes in our lives and different outcomes. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:41:31] Well, we have just a few minutes left. And I wanted to ask—because the name of the podcast is Practical, Nontoxic Living—what are your top one, two, three tips for practical nontoxic living? 

Jozi Radus: [00:41:45] Well, I thought about it because I was thinking about your beautiful work and nontoxic living. And I was thinking, I don't know where it was that I read... It was like a meme or something like that... That said, You can remove all the EMFs, and you can eat kale, and you can make sure that there are no toxins in your life, but if you don't do the self-work, you'll still live in a toxic environment. 

And actually, I think that that's really true because I think that we have to do both. I think that we have to do the work of removing the physical toxins in our environment and becoming aware of that. But I also think we have to realize that we have toxic thoughts and we have negative energy internally and that we really have got the power to make those changes... And that changing your external environment can only go so far, that if you really want to make a significant shift in your life, you need to look within to change some of those negative internal toxins so to speak. So, yeah. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:42:49] I totally agree. Our perceptions, perspectives, frameworks through which we view or experience various things—whether it's health, or love, our relationships, what success is—those are all ideas we have in our heads based on our life experiences. And if we can bring more awareness to those filters through which we experience life and recognize the patterns that don't serve us, the world just opens up to so much possibility and so much more happiness, health, and love. 

You're such a gem. Anyone who can spend time with you will be so lucky to have transformed my life. And I know you will transform many others. Thank you so much. 

Jozi Radus: [00:43:44] It's such a pleasure. And I really appreciate you and the work that you're doing. So thank you so much. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:43:50] I didn't realize that the hand gestures help you channel! 

Jozi Radus: [00:43:55] Our blocks will show up in various different ways. So they may show up in physical symptoms, or in confusion around what's right for us nutritionally, or feeling like we don't belong, or feelings of anxiety, all those sort of things. If we're having multiple different, like physical issues or we can't sleep, we just have this kind of generalized anxiety and we can't settle. All of those things are kinds of symptoms that show us that we need to do deeper work. 

I have absolutely nothing against medication. I think medication is super duper helpful in many ways. When symptoms are presenting in various different ways, then that means that there's something to look at, that we should really take a look. And then we'll be amazed at how much power we have, how absolutely incredible we really are, and how we can really turn our lives around. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:44:52] That's so helpful. 

We have this sleep epidemic. So many people have trouble sleeping. There is something underlying all of that. 

Jozi Radus: [00:45:02] Absolutely, we do. So true. Sleep is such a big one because when we sleep, the line between our conscious and unconscious kind of blurs.

So very often we might be avoiding what's going on in our unconscious mind if we can't sleep. Often, we are working very deeply upon our unconscious stuff when we're sleeping. So that can be a reason why people don't sleep. 

Or, there's so much stress in our society now. And our nervous systems are so jacked up. We don't know how to activate our parasympathetic nervous system to calm down. We just don't even know how to do that.

And also, there are worthiness issues. We feel like we are supposed to be working all the time. We don't understand how important it is to allow ourselves to rest, and to nurture, and to nourish ourselves so that we can really be the best that we can be. 

So while we work deeply on emotional stuff, the system usually will be able to point out things like, OK, you need to be getting at least eight hours sleep a night, or what food supplements are you taking? So we might even just look at that. And we can test to see if you need to add a particular food supplement. Or we may even see that there's a physical symptom that we think it's emotional, but maybe it's actually really physical. 

So the system can actually even help us check out certain things like if we constantly having physical pain and we don't know what it is, it's definitely worth having a session. And let's see if we can uncover... Maybe it is literally a physical thing that you have to go see a doctor, but maybe it's an unconscious, trapped emotional issue that we need to look at. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:46:45] I agree the world would be a better place if we all did this work. 

Jozi Radus: [00:46:54] I think that's the only way we really can make change now, is to work on ourselves, to be better people. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:47:02] The world seems so crazy now. How can we soothe the parasympathetic nervous system? Meditation?

Jozi Radus: [00:47:10] I think meditation. I think also, you know, we have to be also very aware of issues around spiritual bypassing too because we have by now had a lot of loss. 

I'm big on giving ourselves opportunities to feel and allowing ourselves to feel. Just like how we learned of mindfulness, how to watch thoughts go by. We need to also learn how to do that with our emotions and give ourselves opportunities to feel. So I think that that's a big one. 

A lot of time we run from our feelings. So that's also why we're so activated because we just feel like if we stop, it's all going to come out. And so we need to create safe spaces to allow ourselves to feel safe, to work with a practitioner, or to even find ways through writing, through journaling, or through art. I find art to be such a helpful thing—drawing—or even moving to allow yourself to just be in those in those emotional states and allow yourself to feel. I think that really can help too, giving ourselves some downtime. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:48:11] You know how we spoke earlier about a lot of people who are afraid to sleep because during sleep the lines between the unconscious and the conscious blur more? Is that also a similar reason why so many people are afraid to be alone? 

Jozi Radus: [00:48:26] Yeah, I think you're right, I think that's so true. It is so true because when you are alone, then all your thoughts coming up. Absolutely. And we're distracting ourselves all the time—with company, with social media, with Netflix, with all these things... Work, all these things, we're distracting ourselves so that we don't confront ourselves. And that's what we really do need to do, is to confront ourselves and realize that we are actually just incredible. There's really nothing to run from. We really don't have to run from ourselves. We have to learn to accept ourselves just 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:49:03] To let the water flow! 

Jozi Radus: [00:49:07] Exactly. And dry out. I love your dry out. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:49:11] When the water hurts, let it flow. 

Jozi Radus: [00:49:13] And be kind to the self, creating safe spaces like through, you know, committing to kindness to the self, and compassion, and support, supporting ourselves. A lot of us didn't receive support when we were growing up in the way that we really needed. So we have to learn how to be kind to ourselves, how to develop other ways of raising ourselves so that we can grow. 

Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. 

Sophia Ruan Gushée: [00:49:46] My pleasure.