110. Navigating Ancestral Healing and Spiritual Work with Zara Taulelei

Step into a world of empowerment and ancestral healing with Zara Taulelei. It's a journey of Zara from a Berlin filmmaker to a respected Māori ancestral healing practitioner in New Zealand.

Discover the impact of ancestral healing on personal growth and success. Zara's wisdom and synesthetic gifts inspire, touching on Māori culture, plant medicine, and unlocking your roots' transformative power.

Also, let's dive into her dedication to preserving indigenous knowledge and the beauty of her synesthetic experiences.

Join us in embracing ancestral healing and spiritual growth today!

Book a FREE connection call:
https://zarataulelei.as.me/schedule.php

Connect  on her social media account:
Instagram: @moonmirrormedicine

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Transcript

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During, yeah, the last 10 years of my own journey and my own journey of healing my ancestral traumas that I wasn't really consciously aware of, but I always felt that there were like I could always feel that there were some really big traumas within my ancestral lineages coming from Germany, having two world wars, things that were not talked about, you know, it's, you just inherit cultural ancestral trauma if you want or not. Welcome to the sensitive success podcast, where we explore the unique challenges and opportunities that comes with being a sensitive change maker in today's world. I'm your host, Frida Kahlo, and I have spent the last decade recreating my life. I moved from Sweden to New Zealand and now live in the beautiful bush with my husband and two kids, homeschooling and creating a life and business that works for me with the help of my sensitivity and support others to do the same. I'm excited to share conversations with experts. Thought leaders and fellow sensitive people who also see the world through the lens of sensitivity. Thank you so much for being here, because it means that you are creating sensitive success too, which is precisely what the world needs. Let's get started. Welcome to Sensitive Success. I'm excited to say welcome to Zara Tle. Welcome, z. Welcome. Thank you. Did I say welcome? So excited to have you here. And Sarah is a film director from Berlin, living not far from me here in the far north of New Zealand, Aotearoa. And now she is working as an Ancestral Lineage Healing Practitioner, Intuitive Healer, and Akashish Record Reader. She's also an apprentice with Māori Tohunga Wiremu. It feels like there's quite a distance between film directing in Berlin and now learning about Maori spiritual work. So please tell us a bit more about your journey and how you come to do what you do. Yes. Thank you, Frida. I'm very glad to be here. Yes, it is quite a journey, um, from, from Germany to Aotearoa, as you know, as well, coming from Europe. I've been living in New Zealand now. Like, I came here for the first time 10 years ago, and I've been living here now consistently for five years. Yes, so I trained as a film director in Berlin, in Germany, and I really loved that. It was like a passion of mine. I really loved film. I loved Berlin and I love working as a film director and I thought that is what I would do forever. Yeah, things just started to change, but it was more like it wasn't my, did not decide consciously to leave my career and to set out to travel the world. It was not like a decision that came from here. It was really. Something else driving it, like spirit really driving me to do this. And I set out to travel and came to New Zealand as well in that first year of travel and things just started changing for me. I was, I was traveling as a film director with my camera and with my film even. And wherever I went, you know, went to the South Pacific to, um, the Pacific islands and shared my movie with the people and. You know, always filming, always taking photos, doing interviews, and always seeing everything in a film and like in a project. And I really like New Zealand. I really like the people that I connected with here and Also, I was very moved or very balled once I was here to, to the Maori culture. I was lucky to be invited onto a marae. I was lucky to be introduced to beautiful people who took me in and just shared a lot of, um, their culture with me. And I, I honestly had, I didn't know anything when I came from Germany about Te Reo Māori, the language, the people, the culture, but once I heard my first karakia and also my first waiata, that is the song, I just felt really moved and I had this just sort of, I, I know there's something in me knows this. This, this sounds, it's, it felt really familiar and I decided I wanted to spend as much time as possible and Connect with the culture and I stayed for one year and then I kept on traveling and there's a lot. So I'm just cutting it short. So a couple of years later, I am living in South America and Peru at that time. And I was working with plant medicine. And apprenticing with the plant medicine maestra in the Amazon. And I also, that was where I also met my husband, Teatea Taulelei, who is from New Zealand. He's a Samoan Kiwi, so he's from Samoa and New Zealand. We met in South America and I had been to Aotearoa and, and I had also been to the South Pacific. So it was quite interesting to meet. away from the places where he's from and where I had been. And yeah, after a while, we just knew that we would come back here to Aotearoa and. To be closer in the Pacific and also to, we knew that there was some work that we're going to do. We didn't quite know back then what it exactly was, or who was the teacher we're supposed to meet. But, um, yeah, so when we came to Aotearoa, we then made contact. To, with Vitamuniania, who is the Tohunga that we've been apprenticing with for the last three years and teaches and trains people in Mahiwairua. He's, yeah, one of the last Tohungas or of the Tohungas who actually shares his knowledge and has a deep interest on passing on that knowledge. And. And also maintaining the wisdom and, and supporting the people with it. And yeah, so we've been very fortunate to learn with him and from him and yes. So maybe that brought it a little bit from film direction to New Zealand and Mahi Wairoa doing spiritual work now. I love that. What a beautiful journey. So this is the sensitive success podcast. What does success mean to you? So I'm a Capricorn, that is my sun sign, and I think Capricorns can be quite success orientated, and I know that I'll do have that thinking sometimes, you know, also as a film director, that was important to me. In a way, you know, it was important to me to have a film that was screened on a, in a festival that had a good, you know, that had good critique, like, it was something, it was goal driven in a way, but then things changed on, on many levels, so, you know, like, you could say success can, it is not material for me anymore. I think that's what I want to say. It can be material and there's nothing wrong with that. And, but I, if I'm really feeling into what success means to me, then it's not on a material level anymore and probably never really was. So, yeah, what is my state of health? What is my mental state? How is my spiritual connection? And also I think real success for me. means if I'm living my dharma, like if I'm living what I'm supposed to, to be doing here on earth. And if I feel that is in alignment, that feels like that's a good success. So have you always felt because you said you loved the filmmaking as well. Have you always felt that you lived in alignment or is that something you had to work with? I feel it's something that's been like a pillar, you know, so it's like being in thriving to be as authentic as possible. I was that also with the films that I was making, you know, so it wasn't really, I wasn't working for the big industry. I was, it was more art film and, you know, writing my own films. and sharing my message in the film. So being true in your authentic expression, I think that is something that always has guided me or that what that I'm thriving to, to be. And then I think along the way, it just changed for me how I was able to do that because I, as a film director, to some point I, I was, and I loved it. And then it just, Um, you know, and really feel like it, it was more like my ancestors being like, okay, actually you have to do a few other things to sort of, um, moving me into a different direction. Hmm. Love that. Beautiful. Another thing you mentioned in your, uh, what you wrote to me before we jumped on here was that you have synesthesia, synesthesia, tell us a bit more about that. So probably most people maybe have heard about that or know about that from, um, That a lot of musicians have that, or like famous composers, um, or painters or artists. So it can show up in different ways. So for me, my synesthesia has always been that I see colors with, um, letters and numbers, for example. And also when hearing certain words or smelling, like with all my senses, it's connected with colors and images. That has always been like that, and also the, the color code is not something that I consciously shows it was always. So, for example, your name, you know, I'm just using that as an example. So the A in my color alphabet has always been yellow. Like the sun and so that's a very dominant color. And so I can't change that. I can't decide. I would like it to be blue. So it's just how it shows up. And so therefore it aligns with other colors or other letters. For example, and yeah, so the colors come with the names with, I think it supports me in having a good memory, but also, of course, in the work that I'm doing, making use of my synesthetic gifts that were obviously not supported, like in my upbringing in Germany, there wasn't something that people were aware of, or the school that I attended, it was quite the opposite, so when I started writing as a child, I was trying to use the, the right, like the, the same color pen for the letter that I had to write, you know, when you are in first grade and you learn the alphabet and you have to write it down like a hundred times the letter A, a hundred times the letter O. And I was, you know, writing, my whole, um, book was, Written with, you know, every word had a different color because that's how I saw it, or I still see it. And then, of course, it was like, well, you can't use that. You have to use one pen. You don't have time to, you know, paint the letters. So, of course, I had to adjust, you know, you learn that then quite quickly. And I also realized, oh, not everyone sees colors. I thought, you know, as a child, people. See colors so that, you know, maybe your a has a different color. Everyone has a different color. That's why people like different colors. But then I realized that not everyone actually sees colors. And works with colors, or they're not as pleasant for them. I just find it so fascinating how different we can work, like how different our minds work. And yeah, like the sadness of not having that expressed. And as you say, using it as a gift. I, yeah, I love that you reconnected with that and really see it as a gift now. Yes, I really do. I feel I always embraced it, but I, you know, it took me, like, I also didn't grow up with a name or framework for that. I remember I was probably in a late, in my late teens when I heard the first time that word synesthesia and how that's connected. And then I'm like, Oh, well, I have this, you know, it wasn't like no one, none of the teachers are Knew what that was, you know, yeah, but recently, I would say in the last 10 years through my work, I feel I've been really able to develop that more strongly on trusted and use that even for my work. I also use and channeled it in my work as a film director, you know, like. Films have a certain theme for color, like the cinematography I worked with, we worked really strongly with the moods and colors, of course, you know, it always flowed into, into my work. And now it's just differently connected to how I, um, connect to my intuitive gifts. Love that. Yeah. So when you talk about your work, do you see it as a business or how do you see it? Yes, I do see it as a sacred business. Um, I would say with whatever I earn money, that's my business. And, you know, there's often this, like, when you are a healer or when you work in the healing arts that, um. Yes, some people, you know, might not want to focus on the business, but it's like at the end, this is like, this is what I'm sharing. This is what I'm getting an energy exchange. And so, yeah, this is my business. And what do you feel is the biggest challenge to be a sensitive in business? Probably the overwhelm, I feel so, you know, creating structure, maybe that works for one, you know, in a good way, in a healthy way. And I also feel that a lot of intuitive and sensitive people, you know, we can go because we have get so much information through our heads. So like through our pineal and the third eyes, we can be quite caught up in the head sometimes. And I feel it's really important to be able to ground yourself in order to, to thrive in, in your practice and in your business. Yeah, absolutely. And that's, you know, I feel very, very grateful to be living in New Zealand and where we are like surrounded by nature. And that's, you know, I choose that because I know this is, it supports me. Yeah. At this point, I cannot imagine, you know, living again for in Berlin, in the city being surrounded by so many people. Yeah. Finding environments that work for you and getting out into nature as much as possible. I do that regularly, even after, you know, when I have sessions, especially for energetic work. It's so important to go out and cleanse yourself, clear that energetic field and nature just supports you with that. So you just have to go out and, but really, you know, using that scheduling that in, even if it's necessary for people who are not living in the bush as we, or, you know, you can go out into the park or like, take a shower, but finding grounding exercises to, to really come back. to yourself and also to be able to share from a place of groundedness. Yeah, I love that. And I, yeah, I can definitely feel a shift also from living in the bush for a year now, moved from Hamilton here. It's really a shift and so, so grounding. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you see as the biggest strength as a sensitive in business? As I asked about the challenges, I want to ask about the strengths as well. So I would say for myself, it is having that spiritual connection, bringing that into my business and letting that guide is, I feel that is the strength because it's not, it doesn't come from the healing out or from the mind. It comes from something bigger or from a bigger source and connecting to that. Um, and being able to connect to that. I feel that a lot of people and also a lot of business people are lacking that, and they might, you know, they're looking to find it or the, but you can't, you can't find it with here. You can't find it with pushing or powering through something. It's, it's not found in the fast pace world, usually. So, for people who are very sensitive, once you find your place, and once you accept. Where you are with that, it becomes easier to be, to be a conduit for what wants to come through you. And yes, I would say that is the strength for, that I'm feeling in my business and I imagine for others. How do you balance that following what, what feels of following the spirit and the need to, to live in this world, to make money, to have a roof over your head and all that? Yeah, I feel that because we're only in the spirit world and the upper world, you know, then, of course, um, people can get a little bit aloof, you know, that's why I feel it's important to stay grounded and being able to. Get your food from outside and also doing things with the reverence. Funny, while I'm just talking, just outside my window, there are two bulls who are fighting each other. So, speaking about grounding, and just like, Wow. Yeah, sorry, they just distracted my view because they've been like going on each other, just running in the, in the field. It's like, you know, in Mahi Wairoa, we always, um, we talk about Orangi, which is the sky of heaven, and Papatūānuku, which is the earth, and it's about bringing these two, like, together, and being balanced in both. If we're too strongly in one or the other, we can't be really present here. And I feel that it's a constant practice, you know, it's something what you do on a daily basis, like how can you maintain your spiritual practices, for example, whatever that is to you, plus then the Mundane things like cooking a meal and preparing food, cleaning up, doing all of this and still having time to expand into your business or like doing things like social media or doing things like a podcast, you know, to, to find balance with that, it's a challenge and I feel it can be, it's really my sense. It becomes more and more challenging with the more we. Here from the outside world, we more we engage with what's around us. You know, you can get bombarded and especially for sensitive people. You have to have a strong boundary and decide like not. If you feel like you want to go off social media for a week for some time, do that, you know, have boundaries with that don't have to answer to messages. If you're not feeling good that day, like, you know, make yourself time and space where fits what and you can use the moon calendar. You can use your, if you're a woman, your biological calendar to what is good for you. And And work with that going, coming away from this patriarchal have to work from Monday to Friday, and then you stop and then you have now Christmas break and then you stop and then you push again. It's like really coming back to what is nature telling you and trying to live by these principles feels super supportive for how we can run our business. I love that. And you also talk about ancestral trauma. Tell us a bit more about that work. Yeah. So I'm an ancestral healing practitioner through the Ancestral Medicine Network. Um, my teacher is Dr. Daniel Fore and I support people connecting with their ancestors. And so, you know, I'm coming from Germany. So I You know, it wasn't really, I wasn't really brought up with a framework for ancestral reverence. And I would say most people in the Western culture are not, no. So I am married to an indigenous man and I lived in a lot of different countries and engaged with indigenous cultures. So I've seen how it can be different. And that's also why I'm passionate about maintaining these paths. Wisdom and this knowledge and so during the last 10 years of my own journey and my own journey of healing my ancestral traumas that I wasn't really consciously aware of, but I always felt that there were like, I could always feel that there were some really big traumas within my ancestral lineages coming from Germany, having two world wars, things that were not talked about, you know, it's from. You just inherit cultural ancestral trauma if you want or not. So, and then working with that on an unconscious level really started bringing massive healing for me on a personal level. And then of course, through that, I also wanted to share that and feel there's a strong need, you know, for people to, to realize that you can connect with your ancestors and that. The healing is possible, the repair work is possible, and we just have to, you know, be shown how to and connect with people who might hold that reverence and And reclaim that. For me, it's really like reclaiming of old rites and rituals that our people, every one of our ancestors had. And of course, if you come from like the Western world, it's been buried for a long time, but it's still there and we can connect to that knowledge. And once we tap into that, it can really enliven that person's experience of what they have been, what they've been going through at this time. If it's illness, if that's depression, I've seen really big changes happening through that work. And that's why I'm really grateful to be sharing it too. So how do we know if it's something with us or if it's some something behind, behind us, something deeper, something older that needs to be healed? Yeah, I would say probably most people just have a sense. So maybe if I've identified it that this is yours, and then it also, you know, can be, it can become yours because it got passed down to you and you just accepted it to be yours, or to be part of that lineage, part of your story. So if we're not connected to our ancestors, or we don't know what actually the burdens and the blessings of the lineages are, then it's also hard to differentiate where it's coming from. But it doesn't mean that you need to know your ancestry. You need to know who died of what it's something that you can, it's an innate wisdom that is held within ourselves. You can connect to that. So it's okay to have that intellectual knowledge as well, but it's something that you feel in your bones. And it's also. Like in the ancestral healing, we sometimes use that term that we as the living, we, so we are here in this realm, the ancestors or the dead, you know, you can see them in another realm if you want. And, but we are the living face of our, and of our people, of our ancestors. So, therefore, there is a connection if we want to or not, and then we can. You know, if there's like, um, things that are affecting you maybe on an, in a negative way, most people know that it's ancestral or that it could be connected to it. It's like an, an inner knowing where it could come from. Do you think that we are extra perceptive, uh, sensitive? Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. I also feel that, you know, most people Like, I always think everyone is born sensitive, you know, and then they're like, maybe different levels of sensitivity that one has. And then, of course, how is that nurtured during life and how are you able to keep it and then you can exercise that muscle of your intuition and your sensitivity and live accordingly to it or the total opposites, you know. But I believe that everyone has an innate ability to, to connect to that. So if, if someone feels like they do want to connect to, they do want to heal that, where can they start? So there's a lot of free material out there too, from the Ancestral Medicine Network. And then of course you can book sessions with a practitioner, for example. For to start really that work, I often say it's a bit like imagine doing psychotherapy, but with your ancestors, that's how it felt for me in the beginning. So it's not, um, it's not like a one time session and I'm not coming and doing, and I'm also not doing the healing. I'm just holding that space because me and my people hold that space because the healing comes from your ancestors. Like, I don't have the power to do anything there that's, you know, the, the ones who the elders have the power and the wisdom and the strength to send healing that way. So, all we can do as the living, we act like a bridge by us, like, connecting to them and asking them for guidance and asking them for protection and for healing that can get activated. We are not doing it. We're just the ones connecting with the ones who have that power, but like with bigger powers. Another thing that you, you're passionate about and talking about and that we can hear already is preserving the indigenous knowledge. So yeah, tell us a bit more about that. Yeah. You know, maybe first of all, through my husband as well. So he is Samoan and then we lived in South America and I lived in really different, um, communities and saw different indigenous cultures. I feel very grateful for that experience and then now here in Aotearoa, um, working with the Tohunga and What that told me is, you know, I feel often as people who grew up in the West, we, like we run around and we, that's how I felt when I left, you know, so I thought I was, I thought I was okay. I was quite happy as a film director living in Berlin, but I had like some kind of inkling. It was just the sense something was missing and I did not know what it was. I always thought, like, I always seen myself as a spiritual person, probably not in that way that I would see myself now, you know, now I have deep faith in spirit. Back then, I didn't quite know what it actually was or what the powers were I can connect to and support, be supported by. And I feel most of Westerners don't have that connection because we've been like cut off from that. And so that's, we run around and we think something is off. People have depression, all sorts of illnesses, all sorts of disconnection, disconnected from the spirit world. People like acknowledge that they have a body and a mind, but spirit is like, maybe religion, but what is spirit, you know? So there's, it's not really an alignment. And so that's how it felt for me too. And then that really changed once I accepted spirit comes first. And what does that mean? And how, how does it, does that affect my life? I would say that probably most of the indigenous cultures, they all have that same pillar. They accept spirit as the power that comes first. And then the human comes and then the mind and the body comes. And I would say in Western culture, it's the other way around. So sometimes there's a little bit of spirit that is accepted or you can have. Some contact, but it's, it's not the other way around and I feel by, you know, my passion of preserving that it's just what it did for me when I could connect back to that innate sense and knowledge and wisdom that my own people held, of course, I feel deep reverence for the wisdom and knowledge that the indigenous people hold and yeah, I feel it's utterly important that we. preserve that and honor it. And I feel also so many people feel drawn to these teachings because they know that they've been missing something deep inside, but they just don't, can't really word what it is. Yeah, definitely. It really resonates coming from Sweden, which is one of the most non believing people on earth as well. I can really feel a sense of loss and sadness around my own. history and the loss of connection and knowledge around that, but also like a fear or, yeah, a fear of stepping into someone else's knowledge. Um, so how do you understand what I mean? And, and what do you say about that? So do you mean fear of stepping into someone else's knowledge? Because I feel like my knowledge, Swedish Indigenous knowledge is It's gone. Um, because it's been so long ago and stepping into like, especially here in, in New Zealand, I can feel a longing for stepping into my own, my own lineage, uh, because it's so present here with the Maori and, and the knowledge they have, but also fear of stepping into there. And, and cause it, it's, it doesn't feel like it's mine if you know what I mean. Yes. I understand that. And I feel that's why, you know, I would say for me, so my own journey and my own connection with my ancestors has started taking place while not even being on my ancestral lands and being away from Germany. In a funny way, I had to be away from Germany from probably the most recent trauma or, you know, the trauma that the recent death. We're carrying was so strong that it was affecting me while I was there. And so for me, it was easier. And the longing became stronger when I was away from Germany that I could actually connect and heal what I wasn't able to do while I was in Germany. I don't say that that's for everyone. That was my personal experience. And. My connection to my people, my ancestors who are all Germanic, or most of them, is really strong now, and I feel because of their support, because I know where I'm coming from, I know who they are, I know they have my back, I know they are guiding me, that's why, maybe relate in a different way to, to the other ancestors. But. Because I know who mine are, and I feel that that is something, you know, that people who are not having that connection, and they're missing something, and then they might, you know, they see Indigenous people being very connected, or maybe having that strong connection, and they can, that can trigger, you know, a fear, or also you know, Sadness, or you're just not knowing actually how to change that. And I feel from the work, I know that, you know, we, yes, we might feel that things are lost or they've been like buried for such a long time. It is possible to connect to that wisdom and to that knowledge that your ancestors carried, even if it's very long time ago. And I know it from myself and how that supported me in also, you know, not feeling alone, feeling like, yes, oh, I, I also have people around me who want this for me, who I can call on to. And that is, you know, something where I feel, yeah, we have to reclaim this. Yeah. Yeah. So what I'm hearing also is like really reclaim and gaming back the knowledge from our own lineage so that we can explore with other indigenous people as well, but not filling the void with, with others. Yeah. And also one important aspect. I feel in the ancestral healing, especially as being able to listen and, you know, because in that process, when I guide people through that process, it's, it's like a trans meditation where you, you know, you enter a connective space where you, where connection is possible, you know, and so it's important to listen to what they actually have to say. And I feel if we're not able to listen to our own ancestors, how are we then able to listen to. What the indigenous people have to say, you know, how are we able to preserve what is still here. If we're not able to listen to our own people. Beautiful. I feel like there's so much more we could go into. But if someone wants to know more about you and your work, where is the best place to find you? Yeah, so, um, Instagram is a good way to find me on Moon Mirror Medicine, and then my website and the schedule site for to connect with me. I offer free connection calls for everyone who's interested in my work. So I offer ancestral healing, and Mahi Wairua support, and also I read Akashic Records. Beautiful. So much yumminess there. Thank you so much for being here. Is there anything else that you would like to say to those sensitives that are listening? It is really your strength to be sensitive and to see, you know, to, to be this sensitive being, even if it can be so overwhelming sometimes. If you're able to honor your needs. First, it is such a beautiful gift and your biggest strength to be that sensitive and then also to share from that place. It's, it's beautiful. I love that. Beautiful. Thank you so, so much. Thank you so much for being here and sharing your wisdom. I love this conversation and thank you for the work that you do in the world. It's so important. Thank you, Frida. Thank you so much for having me. It was really great to talk to you. Thank you for listening to Sensitive Success. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and share it with someone who could benefit from this message. And come over and connect with me on Instagram at FridaKarl. And remember, sensitivity is neither good or bad. It's what we make of it. Embrace your sensitivity and use it to create sensitive success your way.