17. Shadow Work, Chakra Imbalances and Carving a Path Towards Authentic Living Ft. Sunshine "The Pink-Haired Psychic Medium"

In this podcast episode, Sunshine recounts her journey of self-discovery, from recognizing her psychic and mediumship abilities as a teenager to confronting her struggles with alcoholism and societal pressures. She discusses the supportive nature of her family despite a Catholic upbringing and the ridicule she faced from her ex-husband. Sunshine shares insights into her shadow work, chakra healing, and the importance of somatic therapy for physical manifestations of chakra imbalances. She differentiates between communicating with her higher self and spirit guides and emphasizes embracing the human experience. 

Sunshine is a Psychic Medium, Soul Healer,  Spiritual Advisor, Shadow Worker, Eclectic Witch, Practiced Magician, Recovering Alcoholic and founder of Sunshine Readings. Her passion is helping others learn how to step into their shadows so they can uncover their magickal gifts needed to remove any energetic blocks to their soul’s enlightenment. 

We discuss: 

• Sunshine's personal journey of discovering her psychic and mediumship abilities
• Her struggles with alcoholism and path to living a more authentic life
• Influence of her upbringing in a Catholic household and family's openness to spirituality
• Reflections on societal pressures and expectations
• Struggles with alcoholism, workaholism, perfectionism, and control
• Journey of self-discovery and reclaiming authenticity
• Experience with shadow work and chakra healing
• Physical manifestations of chakra imbalances and somatic therapy
• Communication with higher self and spirit guides
• Nature of the human experience and spirituality

Where to find Sunshine: 

https://www.sunshinereadings.com/

https://open.spotify.com/show/6KqkVAdfZeBGu2xNRizygh?si=v_FfsyFlQ0-hgQ47u1bQIQ

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DISCLAIMER:
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are the guest’s own and do not represent the views, thoughts, and opinions of Shifting Dimensions. The material and information presented here is for general information and entertainment purposes only.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

This is our heart chakra and these are all of the like stories around our worth, you know, and the worthiness that we have, and the conversation that her and I were having, when she was telling me she was like her mother, who's passed away a number of years ago. Her mother, when she was alive, would do everything for everybody else and would, to the detriment of herself, right, would, burn herself out. And she's telling me she goes. Yeah, she goes. I realized my mom was doing this when I realized that I was doing it.

Speaker 2: 0:38

You're listening to Shifting Dimensions. I'm your host, Jumi Moses. On the show today is Sunshine, the pink-haired psychic medium. Sunshine is a psychic medium, soul healer, spiritual advisor, shadow worker, eclectic witch, practice magician, recovering alcoholic and founder of Sunshine Readings. Her passion is helping others learn how to step into their shadows so they can uncover their magical gifts needed to remove any energetic blocks to their soul's enlightenment.

Speaker 2: 1:10

Again, shadow work or stepping into shadows, really means taking a look at the not so pretty sides of our personalities and who we are as people and digging deeper to kind of see how those shadows are currently affecting our lives and hindering us from being in alignment with our higher purpose. In our conversation, Sunshine recounts her journey of self-discovery, from recognizing her psychic and mediumship abilities as a teenager to confronting her struggles with alcoholism and societal pressures, which led us into a deep discussion on shadow work and chakra imbalances and how they manifest in our lives. Again, for those who may not be familiar with chakras, chakras are essentially the different energy centers within our body. Sunshine and I also discuss connecting and communicating with our higher selves. Let's get into the show, Sunshine. Welcome to Shifting Dimensions. Thank you so much for being here. How are you?

Speaker 1: 2:37

Oh, I'm doing fabulous today. Jimmy, how are you?

Speaker 2: 2:40

I'm great and I'm excited to kind of dig a little bit deeper into your journey, because I think you have a wealth of knowledge and a wealth of personal life experience that you can really share with the audience, as well as a lot of your spiritual practices and gifts that you have. So I want to start off by asking you when did you realize that you were a psychic medium?

Speaker 1: 3:09

realize that you were a psychic medium. That's an interesting I don't know that anybody's ever asked me in those words. So all of a sudden I was like, wow, when did I realize I was a psychic medium? I don't think I started claiming the label psychic medium until I started literally doing it professionally, which was four years ago. When did I realize I had psychic abilities or was a medium? I was a teenager. I was a teenager around the age of 16 years old and I shared this story.

Speaker 1: 3:36

I was born and raised Catholic and around 11 years old I went into my parish priest and I said I want to be an altar girl and his response back was like no, and I'm like but I don't understand. I've been to other churches and they're altar girls and he's like my church, my rules, and I was just really confused. You know, I'm like what do you mean? Your church? I thought this was God's house, like. I was so confused and so I kind of ventured away from the Catholic religion at that point. And around the age of 16, I remember, you know, just a mile from where I live right now walking downstairs into this metaphysics store and getting hit with a sense of incense for like the first time and feeling like I was at home, right, feeling like I was someplace that I belonged for the very first time in probably almost my entire life at that point, and I ended up buying my first tarot deck, even though you know there's the stigma that you're not supposed to do that started reading for my friends and realizing I was hitting on things like I truly could pull insights, and at the same time, my grandmother was a medium, though she referred to it as talking to the angels. And so I'm dabbling with some tarot, I'm pulling some cards, and around the age of 19, though, my grandmother passed away and I never was able to witness a medium circle with her. She did it with a lot of the family, but just the cards never kind of hit where I was able to sit and witness a circle with her.

Speaker 1: 5:13

But around a year after she passed, I got a call from my grandfather, and he'd offered to pay for my airfare and hotel for to accompany him and a number of other family members on a trip to Hawaii. You know darn well, I was going to take him up on that, coming from Michigan, hawaii first time. Yeah, and I remember talking to my aunt when we were sitting around one one of the mornings drinking coffee and I told her that I thought I could do it. I thought I could, I thought I had mediumship skills, and she said, well, why don't we try tonight?

Speaker 1: 5:50

So here's me, 19 years old, in a hotel room in Hawaii with, I think at that point it was, three of my aunts, four of my cousins, two uncles and I think my grandfather had already gone to bed. And I tried. I just closed my eyes and I just, you know, took a shot at what I could see, what I could hear. Um, and I was, I was getting hits.

Speaker 1: 6:19

I was describing things that my grandmother had said and, like I said, I'd never sat in circle, I was describing things my grandmother had told my cousins around, their spirit guides and the folks that kind of followed them. I was pulling forward people that my aunts had known when they were teenagers and, like in their early 20s, right, saying things that there's no way I should have known. And so, yeah, you know, between the two of those I mean now I realize that the psychic mediumship that I was doing you know through the tarot and through this you know mediumship session. But yeah, it was, probably I was a teenager between 16 and 19 when I first started actively using these very beautiful gifts.

Speaker 2: 7:02

It's so interesting how you grew up Catholic, but your grandmother was a medium, so it seems like you, even though you grew up Catholic. It seems like your family was open to the spiritual side of life that wasn't just focused on a specific religious dogma or religion or set of rules. So it seems like, although you grew up Catholic, you still had that freedom to kind of explore that metaphysical side and kind of tap into your psychic gifts and so on and so forth. Is that correct?

Speaker 1: 7:37

You're correct on that. I never felt as though there was fear around any of this. I've talked to a lot of clients, a lot of folks that I've mentored, where, even though they may have grown up Catholic or Christian, their families were very much against it. Right, it was evil, it was dark, it was the devil, it was the devil's work and things of that nature. But no, it was never. It was never anything like that.

Speaker 2: 8:01

I mean and there are stories that I've been told of what my you know you- couldn't lie to my grandma, you couldn't like stories I heard, and that was from every one of my aunts. You know that was just how it was. That was how it was for them growing up. My grandmother had these psychic gifts and they couldn't get away with anything. So after you realized that you were able to get impressions and sort of act in the capacity of a medium when you were 19, did it trigger questions for you? Did you start like questioning things that you may have learned about? You know, whether it's religion or just like the way the world works, or just because your family has been so open? Maybe those questions have already been answered because you know you had that freedom to explore.

Speaker 1: 8:52

You know, I wish that was the case, right. But my family, you know, like a lot of families, had its own set of baggage, its own set of drama, its own set of trauma, right. And so, even though we were open to it, it wasn't an open conversation. And not only was I raised Catholic, I went to Catholic school all of my life, and so it's funny that you're asking this. But I would challenge my religion teachers that's what I remember like asking them why and asking them to elaborate. I don't understand, and they would just roll their eyes at me, to the point that there was a couple of them that would allow me to just fall asleep in class because I got so annoying with the questions.

Speaker 2: 9:31

So I was just always really curious and it stemmed from that priest.

Speaker 1: 9:34

Let's be real right you know, to have a priest literally tell me no, you can't, you can't participate in your spirituality in the way you want to, because that's not cool, it just it just blew my mind. So it was really at that point that I started to question and wonder and, you know, I wish I could, I wish I could say there was like some like thing that really kind of spawned. But I've always had this ferocious appetite for knowledge. My grandfather would tell this story of when I was like two years old, two and a half years old, and I walked up to him and I hadn't seen him in a long time and you know, the first thing that I asked him was you know, how are you doing? You know full sentence out. And then I sat down and had a whole conversation with him and just kept asking him why? Everything he would say I would say like but why, but why? And he goes I could not get you to shut up. Nothing I gave you would ever, you know, satiate your question of why. And so, yeah, I've always really been curious.

Speaker 1: 10:42

But I'll tell you, there's a book that still to this day is my most recommended book for anyone, and I was probably around the age of 22 when I first stumbled upon this book, and it was probably in that same metaphysics shop that I ran across it and I don't know why I would have picked it up, except that, you know, maybe it just looked good and it was. The author's name is Don Miguel Ruiz and it's the four agreements. Yeah and um, that book changed my life. It really did, you know.

Speaker 1: 11:16

Uh, he as an author, as a, as a you know, a spiritual like tote tote, like Matt know religious person, just beautiful sentiments, beautiful sentiments that he's sharing. But as an author, he wrote in such a simplistic way, you know, he didn't talk over your head, he wasn't using these big like elaborate words or difficult to understand concepts. He was really relatable. And for anybody that's listening that's never read that book, I can't recommend it enough. I've probably read it three times throughout my adult life and have probably purchased it as a gift well over 15 to 20 times for people over the past 20 years.

Speaker 2: 12:03

I love that book, I love the Four Agreements and I've read it, I think, about two times now. I think that book was so incredible for me because it literally broke this idea of victimization that a lot of us have and we don't realize. I think to your point. He made it so plain right, especially the part where you know we all have a story that we're kind of telling ourselves and the person that you're talking to also has a story that they're telling themselves and we're projecting our stories onto other people and a lot of times everybody's story is personal. Again, obviously I'm paraphrasing, but I just remember reading that book and feeling like wow, it just felt like if there was a curse of victimhood over me. It felt like it was broken and that's just one of many things, one of many insights that I pulled from that book. So I 100% resonate with that book as well. I think it's a powerful, powerful book and I think I've given it as a gift to one person as well. So I'm right there with you. So I know that.

Speaker 2: 13:10

You know part of your story is dealing with alcoholism. You say that you're a recovering alcoholic and there came a point in your life as well where you kind of realized that you felt like you were doing things that society deemed to be stuff that you should do, whether that's getting married or like working in corporate et cetera. And then all of a sudden, you had this like big breakthrough that that shouldn't be how you're living your life, and kind of like redefining your life for yourself and moving past your struggle with alcohol. So can you talk about that a little bit, and how was your spiritual journey intertwined with that struggle that you had?

Speaker 1: 13:51

Yeah, so I, you know, when I talk about this I say I'm a recovering alcoholic, workaholic, perfectionist and control freak, Right, yeah, and you know there's a lot of people, um, yeah, and you know there's a lot of people that might, you know, pause or take a look at kind of you know what I'm about to say and you know see the different perspective. But you know, I've been a psychic. I recognized my gifts when I was a teenager, but I know that I've had them for my entire life. You know, I know that they existed even as a child, for my entire life. You know, I know that they existed even as a child.

Speaker 1: 14:29

These gifts came with a burden and it came with a lot of, I think, overwhelming emotion, noise and the, you know, as a not knowing them or recognizing them, a lot of things that were going on within my own self, my own psyche, that I just couldn't understand. And so I also grew up with in an alcoholic household, and so all of these things combined really meant that I was ripe for escapism. You know, I was ripe for an escape, you know, even though I read that book, even though I wasn't a victim, so to speak, and I gave up that victimhood, same way that you're mentioning. I didn't like the way that things felt. I didn't like the way that it felt to go out into like big, large crowds and big, large social, and so you know, like, but that's what you do. You know you're a teenager, you go hang out and party, you turn 21,. You go out and drink. You know, even like, even like college. You know, thinking of that, like my, my father was just like you have to go to college and that's how you, it's how you make it in this world, that's how you get a good job.

Speaker 1: 15:38

And there's all of these pressures that kind of came down, like pressures that kind of came down. I mean, I don't even know, I don't even know that there's like they're directly said to you. I don't know that any of us, maybe some of us, had the very direct statement. But there is, there's this like societal pressure that kind of comes with growing up. You know, and I even remember when I was like 18, going like why are you asking me what I want to do for the rest of my life, like I'm 18. Like that's just mind blowing to me. But I did it, you know, because that's what you do. You know, you go to school, you get a job, you work, you get a house and, uh, you know, even the whole marriage thing was kind of really strange. You know, there was a piece of me that didn't even want to get married. But my husband asked, you know, my ex-husband asked and what do you say, like, when they ask? You know, you're like, oh, we've been together two years, I think that's just what you do, right, that's just what happens next. Like the box that I got to check and it just it was.

Speaker 1: 16:43

There was a lot of a lot of acting and responding as though I had this predetermined checklist of things that I had to do in life. And uh, with that was also, you know, a lot of underlying anxiety, a lot of underlying fears and even this just I don't even know how to describe it Even just this kind of hesitation to really allow myself to even connect or be intimate with someone. You know, and it was looking back. I never recognized it as that when, when I was in my 20s, I remember I would tell people, I remember the boyfriend that I was living with at the time, one time we got into an argument and his response back to me after I said something was you're such a robot? Yeah, because I wouldn't even allow myself to feel emotion, right? Imagine growing up with psychic abilities, being a highly sensitive person, being an empath, never recognizing it, starting to numb it as soon as you possibly can.

Speaker 1: 17:54

I was eight years old when I first started to drink. That's mind-blowing, right? Catholic, thank you. And yeah, I didn't. I didn't allow myself to feel, I didn't allow myself to be, I didn't allow myself to live, and that's because I was too busy following that checklist of all of the things that society was telling me that I needed to do or that my, in reality, my father, uh, was, you know, expecting, uh, you know, unspokenly expecting, and so it was. Uh, I don't even know I was.

Speaker 1: 18:35

Um, what brought the change about? And even though it took me almost two and a half years to get sober, what brought the change about was really my marriage, you know, and going through therapy and sitting down with these therapists and like, really having them start to like reflect back to me the things that I was saying about how I'd been treated in childhood and how I'd been treating, it was being treated by my husband, and realizing, just like, how distorted my view of self was right, how distorted it was, to the point that I wasn't allowing myself to be, you know, to be given the things that I really, truly deserved as a human, let alone as a loving person, you know. So it was. It was pretty wild and uh, it was really uh, it was really tough and I would never go back there. You know, even as, even as hard as it is feeling all your emotions now, I would never go back to the point of not feeling them.

Speaker 1: 19:48

And yeah, so it was 2017. My divorce was finally done. You know I'd left. I remember I was in couples counseling and I finally had this counselor and they're not supposed to do this but we were nine months into therapy and my ex-husband walked out of the room and that therapist leaned over to me and said it's never going to change. He just does not get it, you know.

Speaker 1: 20:21

And it know I I don't know why in the world, um, some of us have to go down these paths in life that just are so, uh, maybe the picture that in my head is like grating you know, it's just like you're just dragging yourself through.

Speaker 1: 20:37

you're just like not easy, making it hard, all difficult. You know, gotta learn things the hard way, but it was really with that divorce. And then that year, in 2017, my father was, you know, as I said, as an alcoholic found himself on his deathbed and I took a two and a half month of leave of absence to help care for him. And it was the first time that at that point, it probably was just mind-blowing 20 years because I'd been working since I was 14. It was the first time and going to school, mind you, you know, even in high school and stuff it was the first time in probably 20 years at that point that I actually had time to do nothing and I realized just how kind of sick I was, how sick I had become with how I'd seen the world and how I prioritized work over family and loved ones and friends. And I was doing, I was heading down the same path as him.

Speaker 2: 21:42

Wow, there's so much that you said there.

Speaker 2: 21:45

I think the biggest thing that I really resonate with is having to show up in spaces that don't feel authentic to you, so like what you were talking about being young and feeling like, oh, I'm supposed to go out, you know, being in a relationship and getting proposed to I guess this is the next step, right?

Speaker 2: 22:05

And I resonate with that so much because for a while and still currently working through some of those things being myself always felt so scary because how dare I question an alternative life for myself that does not fit the picture of what people think is best for me, right?

Speaker 2: 22:27

And I'm trying to live someone else's life that's not mine, and literally being so hard on myself and, like you said, like grading myself through it, trying to force myself painstakingly to show up in these spaces and, while doing that, literally shoving my emotions down, trying so hard to suppress all of my feelings because I don't even want to question that maybe this reality and how I'm living my life and the choices I'm making are not serving me. So I absolutely resonate with that and I wanna know, with you, realizing that you had medium abilities when you were a teenager, did you put that on the back burner as you were going through life. When did you revisit that and did that help you kind of become more authentic and step into a life that was more authentic to you and more aligned with you?

Speaker 1: 23:27

Yeah, you just got a really big semantic response on me in that question. Oh yeah, you know, I would say I love that you use the word back burner because it was always there. My spirituality, the psychic abilities, the mediumship, they were always there but they were on the back burner. I would pull these things out only when needed, you know, only when in dire circumstances. You know I only use these gifts when my friends ask me to do things.

Speaker 1: 23:53

The mediumship actually got me in trouble a handful of times. I would tell people and they'd try to, you know, I'd prove it, so to speak. And next thing I know I'd never hear from them again. Dating. Don't ever tell somebody you're dating, you're a medium, and then tell them that you see their grandfather and share messages because you won't get a return phone call. I mean, promise you on that one, yeah, and so I did. I put it. I put a lot of it on the back burner and you know, I think, I think there's a lot of people.

Speaker 1: 24:20

You know we're talking 20 years ago, which is a lot different world than it is. There was no witch talk 20 years ago, which is a lot different world than it. There was no, uh, witch talk 20 years ago, you know, and so a lot of that was I was in the closet. I was in the closet with all of these gifts, with all of the bits and pieces of my spirituality, and if I wasn't in the closet, it was a joke to people, you know. They laughed at it, they thought it was humorous and funny, and then my ex-husband just he was yeah, he was a piece of work. When it came to it he ridiculed me on it and really really made, you know, brought, invoked a lot of shame out of me because of it, and not because that's what I was, but because like I couldn't, he wouldn't allow me to do it. So I was like there was this weird shame of like how am I in this relationship with this man that doesn't accept me for who I am, type of thing, and I can't be who I am, even though he knew that's who I was. When we first started dating, it was like we got married and he thought it was okay for him to just ridicule things about me. So yeah, it was.

Speaker 1: 25:27

It was it's definitely on the back burner and not not really a part of my life, my everyday life like it is today, until I resigned from that job that I told you I took that two and a half month leave of absence from. I got back in two and a half months after and realized how sick and toxic of an environment it was, and I was only there for, I think, four more weeks before I resigned. Nothing lined up, no clue what I was going to do. I just knew I could not stay there anymore. It was so horrible for me and you know, that was probably the first time when I remember this very vivid, vivid memory of stepping out and not having anything to do.

Speaker 1: 26:21

For the first time now again, for you know, long time in my life, and I would, I'd wake up in the morning and I had set a timer to put a heater on in a room and I had a yoga mat and I do like 90 minutes of yin yoga every morning. I don't know if you're familiar with yin yoga, but I claim it's the most difficult yoga you can do because it's all mind. And after I would be done I'd be hot and I'd be sore and I would lay there and I would just meditate and I would talk to my guides and I remember laying there and I just I just asked. I said, please, I don't ever want to find myself in that situation again. You know, I don't ever want to find myself in a situation that I lost myself, that I've literally prioritized work and a career over, you know, my family and my loved ones, or myself, for that matter.

Speaker 1: 27:13

Right and um, I asked. I said can you, can you please, like please, show me how? How can I do this? How can you help me? How can you help me? Me, and they gave me one of my um, one of my guides showed up, which I I now have come to realize this is actually my higher self but they showed up in the form of a ball of light and um, when I asked them what their name was, they said their name was b, just b, e and um, yeah, and I, I just laid there and they gave me, uh, this beautiful gift that I started to use from that point forward, which is all I had to do is ask them was this path in my highest and best use or was it not?

Speaker 1: 27:59

And they would show me. They would show me, um, they would paint the picture of a very strong clairvoyance, and so I would look at whatever the scene is, or the picture is, or you know, whatever the imagination that it was in my head or a person, and they would paint it in this beautiful golden light. It would look like the sun was shining on it, it was warm, like a beautiful spring summer day, and if it wasn't, it would look like a storm, like you know storm clouds and these blues and purples and that like bruise of a green. And that's how I started to change my path. I would start to follow that and, uh, I'll tell you. Um, it was probably about three months after that. I started my own, started my LLC around that time, but I ended up finding a full-time job, which is the job I'm retiring from right now, and the only reason I accepted it was because it was shown to me in that bright sunlight.

Speaker 2: 29:02

Yeah, so I have to ask him, Kierce, did they show you that everything that you had to go through and experience did they show you that that was for your highest path? Did B show you that?

Speaker 1: 29:11

So B didn't show me what the path was. And that's interesting that you're kind of asking. I've had a lot of people ask like don't you look at all of your stuff, don't you constantly look at where you're going, and all of this? And I'm like no, because my belief is, the whole experience of life is living it. So it's only when I have a decision to make, I have two paths in front of me, that I will tap in and ask my guide which path I should go. And so that's what B would start to do. I would say, should I go talk to this person? And they would give me a yes or a no, right?

Speaker 1: 29:41

I remember the first time I tried it. I had a lunch with a gentleman that I used to work with. It was a networking lunch and he was really gung ho. He was like, oh, I want you to come work for me. I've got a startup and all this kind of stuff, and it sounded really, really good. And you know, the little squirrely brain of mine was like, oh, this should be great, this would be a good opportunity. And I did that. I looked engaged, one or the other, and B showed me no, it wasn't a good situation and, lo and behold, that proved itself out about three months later, when I forget what it was that I'd said to him. But he flared up, said something really disrespectful back to me and I was just like whoa, okay, good thing I never got into bed with that man. Thank you B.

Speaker 2: 30:28

Okay, so I get it. So they basically or B just shows you what path to take that would be for your highest interest, but not necessarily telling you the future or saying, oh, all these decisions that you made in the past were for your highest good. It's kind of more in the present, Like should I go left or should I go right? Okay, yeah, I got that. Something else I want to talk about is you know your work around shadow work and I think you know in our conversation we've kind of touched on the shadowy aspects of life and kind of being unconscious to how they affect our lives. But I kind of want to go a little bit deeper, because I know that you even have like an intensive shadow work program, so I know that you're pretty deep into these things.

Speaker 2: 31:10

So I want to start off by asking what is shadow work? I hear that so much. I hear it a lot on TikTok. I've heard it on several different podcasts. My understanding of shadow work is looking at the parts of our personalities that we're too afraid to look at, or the parts of our life that are affecting us in a negative way, and how we are playing a role in that negative side effect or what we might perceive to be negative. That's my understanding of it, but I want to hear your understanding of what shadow work is, and why are you passionate about this space?

Speaker 1: 31:47

Yeah, so shadow work is a you know. For anybody that's listening, you can do some research on it from a real kind of background. It was coined the term itself was coined by Carl Jung, right? So this has been around for well over a hundred, and exactly how you described it is exactly how he intended it. It's these parts of our psyche that we tend to repress, right? That's my belief, too, and so the way that I often will look at a shadow work, the easiest way is think about something that you've always wanted to do and you've never actually done it. There's a shadow there, right? Why haven't you done it? Oh, I'm afraid. Okay, why aren't you afraid? Or why are you afraid? Like what? What really is going to happen? And that process that I'm kind of talking about right now, of questioning and exploring and evaluating, that's the work, right, that's the shadow work.

Speaker 1: 32:37

The challenge that I think a lot of people face, though, is they'll do the oh well, you know, I, I, uh, here's a, here's one, this is, this is one that, a long time ago, uh, when I first kind of stepped into doing this professionally, I was nervous and afraid of kind of getting up and being on video and doing lives and all this kind of stuff. There was a shadow and so I had to, like, start to explore and, oh, like, why is it that? I'm afraid? Well, I'm afraid people are going to make fun of me. Why? Why are you afraid people are going to make fun of you? Well, because, you know, for much of my life people have me. You know, I'm a chubby girl, I'm an obese girl. You know, like I have, I've had many, many years of bullying because of the way that I look and so the challenge that a lot of people have when it comes to shadow work, they're like oh, okay, cool, yeah, I'm afraid that's cool, I'm justified in that fear, got it. And that's where they end.

Speaker 1: 33:32

Right, they often will forget that it's the actions beyond it that matter. That's where the true work happens, in the uncomfortable places, right In the actual hitting the go live button and going live for the first time, hitting it again and again and again and continuing to do that work. And guess what, when that first comment comes through, you know, hey, fanny, hey, look at you over there, right, feeling it right and knowing that it's not a truth, I don't have to own that right. That is somebody else projecting their own insecurities on me and I don't have to respond to it. Yeah, so you know, shadow work to me is such a huge proponent of much of what I do, and even though I may not refer to it in every way, shape or form but I often say I don't know that you can do I don't know that there's any deeper shadow work than actually stepping into recovery.

Speaker 1: 34:34

Right, admitting that you have a problem, whether that's in a problem with alcohol, whether that's a problem with, you know, drugs, sex, chaos, violence, drama, shopping, food, sugar, codependency. Right, literally admitting that you yourself has something that is not serving you anymore. You have a habit, a pattern, a thought pattern, you know physical behavior, whatever it may be, and literally starting to dig into the root of why it is that that is the way that it is and how you no longer want that to be, how you're defining your life. Right, shadow work. If you truly want to come into a state of enlightenment, a state where life feels beautiful every day, even in the moments of sorrow, you've got to be willing to do that hard, deep shadow work and look into the things that once may have frightened you, once may have made you drink, may have binge eat, may have ignored people, abused people, abused yourself. Right, you got to be willing to face it.

Speaker 2: 35:36

Thank you. That was a great way of literally explaining it and giving an example that I think a lot of people can relate to. And I want to take it a step further as well, because I know that you work. You specifically talk about the different shadows that affect each chakra within the body, because you know to your point, whenever we're faced with a shadow also in my opinion as well I think we all have coping mechanisms to kind of stuff that down somewhere right. So we might feel it in our heart, which I think I don't know.

Speaker 2: 36:09

I think this is the fourth chakra. I'm not sure what it's called, but I know that we're going to talk about all of that stuff. You might feel it in your heart, you might feel it in your gut, you might start having a headache. So I know that whenever we suppress our emotions, suppress our authentic self, we're too afraid to look at the dark stuff or admit stuff. They do manifest in some way in our body or in the actions that we take. So I kind of want to talk about the different shadows that affect our chakras. So if you could share with the audience and it could be at a high level the different chakras within the body and the different shadows that come up surrounding those chakras body and the different shadows that come up surrounding those chakras.

Speaker 1: 36:51

Yeah, the most common chakras. When people are going to refer to the chakras, they're going to refer to the seven and we're. You know, you think about the color of the rainbow. That's how most people are going to recognize the chakras. And so we go all the way from the root, which is down at the base, and this is everything around, like the things where we find our security, right, um, and so these are, these are the shadows here when it comes to, like, the security and the stuff within our group. This is a lot of the addictions, right? This is a lot of the um I'm, I'm destroying my own self. You know I'm destroying my own, uh, success, I'm my own worst enemy. So those are any of those types of shadows that are going to start to come up. It can also be things around like really deeply rooted type of fears and traumas can end up being in there and so, root. When it comes to the root shadow, that's often something that people need some help and assistance trying to work through If you really have some deep rooted, some deep shadows within your root, trying to work through If you really have some deep rooted, some deep shadows within your root. You know folks that are in therapy are probably experiencing some shadows within their root. We move on up. The second one is going to be our sacral, and our sacral is represented by orange. It's all around our creativity, and if you think about what's the most, what's the most beautiful form of creativity that a human being has the ability to make another one of us, yes, right, so all the sexual energy.

Speaker 1: 38:10

Think about any repressed sexual desires that you may have, whether this is, you are, um, you know, in the closet and you're really uh, you know, um, you're really a lesbian, or you're getting, you know, a gay or trans, or, you know, maybe you want to be asexual. You're like, oh my god, I actually don't like sex, whatever that may be. Those are all of those shadows that can be repressed from that perspective, but you're not actually exploring that. Or maybe you've got a lot of kinks, but you're not actually telling your partner about it. Maybe you really, really, really want to see them in some sexy lingerie, and I'm not talking about a woman. Maybe, as a woman, you want to see your man in some sexy lingerie, right, whatever that may be, that's where that shadow kind of sits and exists.

Speaker 1: 38:54

We move up from that orange into the yellow, and this is the big, this one, this is a lot, and so this is. This is all of the. These shadows are really the stories that other people have written for you, that are trying to define you rather than you defining yourself right? So our solar plexus, which is that yellow color, is going to be where our ego is. This is all around. You know our courage. This is so anytime that we don't have the confidence to truly embrace our own story and I'll tell you, sometimes we can write our own as well. So this is a really little tiny shadow.

Speaker 1: 39:34

For some odd reason, I really, really, really. You know, as a business owner, you kind of have to write, you have to be able to write, and I had this weird thing where I would constantly tell myself I was a good writer, but it was hard. It was a really weird, you know, shadow there but, like, for some odd reason, I kept saying that it was hard, and so I had to do some really deep exploration of why I kept thinking it was hard and what ended up? What ended up happening is I started to realize that as a teenager, even though I was always excelled in English, I ended up taking AP literature in high school, and it wasn't the writing part that was hard, hard, it was this studying for the AP exam and being forced to write in a way that was not conducive to how I chose to write right, and so I had to unpack this story that had been created because of, you know, this other kind of situation that came about in my life, you know.

Speaker 1: 40:42

So any kind of like stories that we are telling ourselves that aren't true, about what we can or can't do, typically exists within that solar plexus. And the next one to your point is the fourth one, and that's the heart chakra. And God. That's a that's a deep one, you know, and it's making me think of a conversation I was having with a friend earlier today. This is our heart chakra, and these are all of the like stories around our worth, you know, and the worthiness that we have, and the conversation that her and I were having when she was telling me she, like my, her mother, who's passed away a number of years ago, her mother, when she was alive, would do everything for everybody else and would, to the detriment of herself, right, would burn herself out and she's telling me she goes, yeah, she goes. I realized my mom was doing this when I realized that I was doing it, right.

Speaker 1: 41:48

So, once again, you know, sometimes our shadows are literally created through just the behaviors and the patterns. Right, we're not actually living our true, authentic self, right, we've just become a condition of know, society or upbringing or nurturing or something of that, that nature, and so, yeah, that that heart chakra shadow is really around, going to be, around the worthiness and the deservingness of you know having a beautiful life and being loved and you know being given the things that we need to be, be given. Um, we move on up into the throat and this is all around our own uh, ability to express. And so, uh, this shadow is a uh, ooh, I'm trying, I mean, even ask my guides. I'm like what's the easiest way? Uh, this guides. I'm like what's the easiest way? This shadow is the lies.

Speaker 1: 42:50

So think about how often we lie to our own self. Oh, I'm okay with this, that's all right, I'm fine, right, even like little simple lies of that nature can be a shadow. We're not reflecting upon the actual truth, we're not being true and honest with our own selves, right, let alone if we're actually lying to other individuals. Right, I find often the shadow shows up more in the lies to ourselves rather than other people, and if anybody that's listening wants to know, I'll tell you. One of the best ways to find out if you actually have a shadow here is whether or not you find you take pride in the fact that you are sarcastic. Sarcasm is a passive, aggressive form of communication and it is one of the biggest detriments to, biggest killers to any type of relationship building. Yeah, and so that's a really, really good indication that you've got some shadows there within your throat.

Speaker 1: 43:44

Beyond that, we end up in the third eye and we end up in the crown, and these are probably the ones that are a little bit more difficult to recognize. Um, mostly because if you have not gone through some of these other ones already, your third eye and your crown chakra are going to be really hard to kind of even reflect upon. But that third eye is truly not trusting your own gifts, your own intuition, your own psychic abilities. My belief is, every single one of us have psychic abilities. We just don't know how to recognize them. And if you don't know how to recognize abilities, we just don't know how to recognize them. And if you don't know how to recognize them, you don't know how to use them right and that uh crown is not embracing your own spiritual path, right? So if you haven't gone through all of those other things and really like been true and honest with all that other stuff, then being able to get to that point that you actually recognize your own spiritual path, your own spiritual truths, is really really hard to do, yeah.

Speaker 2: 44:43

That was amazing. I think that was. I had goosebumps with every chakra that you went through and talking about the different shadows, because at some point in my life I literally could I literally can relate to all of the different shadows for each different you know sacral point within the body and I want to know when a chakra is out of balance, is it all of them that are affected? Or can we be very strong in certain sacral parts of our bodies but then be out of balance for in the root chakra but be very well balanced in the heart chakra, or do they kind of all affect each other?

Speaker 1: 45:25

they're definitely all going to affect each other, but you can have misaligned. You know, balance and alignment in one and misalignment in another. Um, I think this often happens, more so, where one or two will be off when you have somebody that's truly aware of their chakras and actually trying to live more alignment. Let's be real, we live in a human world and I may find myself in a situation that I can't be honest and truthful and it sucks, Right. I don't like that. But you know, let's be real, in order for me to remain safe in my root chakra, I may need to lie to someone. That's, that's the, that's that's the honest truth, and I think same thing to anybody there you and my guides are showing me right now.

Speaker 1: 46:11

Think about anyone that's actually going through any type of sexual identity type of you know challenges. Guess what? They probably, in order to be safe and to accept you know, even though they're okay in their identity, may have to not be truthful in it, right, and so they're going to get some misalignment and there are ways to bring things back into alignment when you take it out. But yeah, they're not all going to be out of alignment at once per se, but they can be. I will say, though, that when you are completely out of alignment, you'll feel it. You will feel it. Things will not feel right.

Speaker 2: 46:45

I agree with you. I think sometimes maybe a lot of people don't think about it in the sense of, oh, I'm in out of alignment for one of my chakras, but people can tell when they're not balanced. People can tell when people might say like, oh, my heart hurts. Or sometimes, unfortunately, if you're really out of balance in certain chakras, I do believe that they do manifest physically, right. So you might have heart issues, god forbid. You might continuously have migraines or maybe you get a lot of sore throat. You know, in the throat chakra For women, there might be like some fertility issues around the sacral chakra. So I understand that that also manifests physically. If you know certain, if we're not understanding that certain things within our body are off balance and I think that's why somatic therapy is also like really amazing therapy and because it's a body-based therapy, really feeling what's going on in your body. So, yeah, thank you so much for explaining that. That was really good.

Speaker 2: 47:47

I want to switch gears a little bit and I have a transitionary question which is still a little bit off topic. But you mentioned your higher self, which is B, and then you also mentioned your guides. Like I know that sometimes throughout our conversation, your guides are kind of speaking to you. How can you tell when you're talking to your higher self versus your guides? I'm really curious. I always ask that question because I'm fascinated by it.

Speaker 1: 48:18

So there's a little bit of training that I have done, and usually my higher self is, if I'm going to be talking to my higher self, there are questions that are directly related to me and my existence and my experience in life. Right, which I'm so silly. Should I make oatmeal for breakfast or should I make, uh, you know, a bagel? Oh, I should make oatmeal. Okay, cool, right, like I'm literally, I literally did it this morning. I all the time it, I'm, I'm weird, um, so I'm literally talking and asking from a um, from a myself, from my, my best, my highest purpose. That's usually when I'm going to be talking to my higher self.

Speaker 1: 48:59

Right, my guides are going to answer any other question kind of related to, kind of what we're talking about, if I'm being interviewed, if I've got questions, just naturally, you know, could you know? This is interesting, this is, they're even kind of asking me this question. They're like they're asking me this question. Do you really think there's that much of a difference? Like, I guess not. Thank you, thank you so much, you, for telling me that.

Speaker 2: 49:33

Thanks, there we go, because I assume that your higher self could act as a guide. Sometimes I think, you know, as human beings we kind of try to get technical with the different terms and try to define things, but I'm sure a lot of these things kind of bleed into each other. But I've just been noticing a lot of discourse around like the higher self versus angels, versus spirit guides, and to me I feel like they're all guiding us. So that's why I always ask that question Like how can you tell the difference and do you call on, do you tap into your guides versus your higher self at certain points? And I guess you know, like you said, it's different for different people. But it's interesting that they asked that question because I assume like they kind of all work with each other and they're all kind of like blended at the same time. So that's interesting, you know.

Speaker 2: 50:20

I have one last question before we close out the show, and we've kind of touched on it with this question that I asked you. But so what do you think the human experience is about? You know, what do you think about? For example, spirituality, because I think the human experience is a spiritual experience really and truly. You know what is something that you hold true about this experience or the nature of this reality that we're all here living and I know that's a loaded question, but no, I think it's a beautiful question and I don't know if you've have you ever seen the TV show Supernatural, supernatural I've seen about two or three episodes okay, well, if any of your listeners you, you may be able to relate to this uh have seen it, uh, in supernatural.

Speaker 1: 51:10

Uh, it, just, it just. This is kind of a way for me to help explain, uh, why I think this. In supernatural, they have angels that are part of the show and it's really interesting because at some point there's one, they have angels that are part of the show and it's really interesting because at some point there's one of these particular angels that actually gets a human-like experience, and the human-like experience is all of the five senses and he starts to taste things for the first time and feels things anger and love and cries and all of this stuff. That's the human experience. It's literally allowing ourselves to live life to its absolute in like most rich self and like being able to feel all of it, being able to smell, to taste, to hear, to see, to cry, to laugh, right Every bit of the emotion wheel and experiencing every bit of it and not running from any of it, all of the highs, all of the lows, and doing it one minute, one hour and one day at a time.

Speaker 2: 52:10

That was beautiful. Thank you so much, sunshine. Final question to wrap up the show, and that is have you shifted in perspective on anything recently? And it could be as lighthearted as you want it to be or as deep as you want it to be.

Speaker 1: 52:26

Shifted in perspective. You know, I think the biggest shift in perspective, as I mentioned it really is me stepping out of this corporate career and into, like doing this full time and realizing you know just how much I love all of that and I love everything that's yet to come.

Speaker 2: 52:51

Thank you so much for sharing that. I you know. I wish you the best as you transition from working full time corporate to being a fulltime you know business owner and sharing your gifts and insights with the world. Where can people find you if they want to connect with you, if they want to learn more about your work and also listen to you, because I know you have a podcast as well.

Speaker 1: 53:13

I always tell people the number one way to reach me is email me. So sunshine at sunshinereadingscom it sounds so silly. Right now you can also visit the website sunshinereadingscom online. All of the major platforms, Facebook and Instagram, the same and if you are looking for some pretty cool podcasts, you can find Witch Please on Spotify, Apple Podcast, a couple, I think, all the major podcast platforms, and I have another long form that I call Deepest Spirituality, so you can check me out on either one of those.

Speaker 2: 53:54

Awesome. Thank you so much for stopping by Shifting Dimensions. It's been a pleasure having you on the show, Sunshine.

Speaker 1: 54:00

Thanks, Jumi. You have a beautiful rest of your day.

Speaker 2: 54:03

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