Healing from your past and limiting beliefs can take so much. Often, we look for the things outside to help us with the process. However, as Jess Shillingford found out, healing takes place when we learn to connect with our subconscious. In this episode, she joins Tesa Baum to share with us her journey to discovering the methods that helped her reclaim her personal power. Jess is the creator of Mindset Alchemy, which is built on the idea that if we go within, we can connect with our master so we can follow the soul’s calling and live a beautiful life. She talks about doing energy work, releasing stubborn mental blocks, and learning how to be present. Join Jess and Tesa in this conversation to find the tools that can help you create a limitless life for yourself and others.
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Listen to the podcast here
Mindset Alchemy: Reclaiming Personal Power, Living A Limitless Life With Jess Shillingford
In this episode, I’m going to be speaking with Jess Shillingford. The minute you hear her voice, you’ll feel alive. She is based in the UK at the moment and loves traveling. She empowers experience entrepreneurial and committed conscious creators, master coaches, healers and lightworkers to reframe what is possible with energetic belief clearing, and co-create limitless lives by design. She is the creator of Mindset Alchemy. She empowers you to use tools on behalf of the self and others to clear your energy bodies and release stubborn mental blocks so you can connect with your superconscious and live a more balanced, aligned, harmonious and divinely guided life in business. She has a free Facebook group called Mindset Alchemy: The Community for Conscious Creators. She has a twelve-month Meditation Mastery membership to support you to unlock your intuition and become a conscious creator. You’re going to love this show.
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Jess, how are you?
I’m fantastic. How are you?
I’m so thrilled to talk to you. I’ve seen you online. I’m so happy to make this human connection with you. I would love to start off with, as we talked a little bit about the Zig-Zag of Life pattern, is there anything you would like to share? Your most impactful or something that stands out that you would like to share.
I would love to talk about the biggest zig-zag that happened for me and how transformative it was. In 2018, I was a Deputy Head of School. I was an English teacher for years in mainstream education in Inner City, in London. I’m passionate about my work. I’m working 70 hours a week. I’m really serious and I loved it but worked very hard. Towards the end, I began to see cracks in the system. I had this passion within me to change things. I knew that if I try to change it from within, I wouldn’t be able to. I started building something externally, but then I got drawn into work for this very small school as a deputy head, where I was able to put my ideas into place. I was able to design the whole culture, which was around The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People to create critical thinkers. I got to put my passion for curriculum design in place and start to create an all-through curriculum for all of the subject areas. However, I was again working hard.
In my private life, I was repeating patterns that at this point began to become quite problematic. I brought a man into my life. He was quite domestically abusive. I thought, “How can this be happening again? How can I be doing this?” I was diagnosed with ADHD at 30 and started taking stimulants. I had been taking stimulants on the weekend to get my work done. Illegally, I was taking Speed every day. Suddenly, my soul was numb. I became very empty and broken. Nothing gave me joy in life anymore. I knew it wasn’t depression. I began to buy crystals.
One day, I woke up and said, “I’m not going to take this anymore,” so I left. This was in the middle of the summer holidays. I walked out of the house and left this very violent man in the house and went to a friend’s house. I still went to school. Somehow, we worked out how to get him to move. I carried on working and doing the school thing because the beginning of the term was coming. I handed them my resignation and I said, “I need to leave by January.”
I had booked a flight to Thailand for the summer but something stopped me. This guy came in July. I was already burnt out. The heat of the violence happened in August. I knew I had to fly to Thailand. Why I booked to go to a very small village which I had no idea about, but I was being intuitively guided. I got to this small village and it was filled with healers, shamans and Reiki healers. Suddenly, I began to receive healing. I intuitively went to these amazing healers. The theta healer took me and we programmed my mind and connected me back to the universe, back to my first core root. Reiki healers were healing me. The shaman did soul retrievals.
Suddenly, my clair skills were awakened. I slowed down and started doing Kundalini yoga and I had no money. Everything had changed. All of what I knew in the past was gone and this was the beginning. I ended up going to a class that I thought was yoga. There was a circle of healers and I said, “I thought this was a yoga class.” It wasn’t. It was the guy, a shaman and he said, “I want everyone around the circle to tell me when your awakening happened.” They started talking about their trauma. I’ve got the goosebumps now and I was like, “I’m awakening.”
[bctt tweet=”Not all paths lead to where you want them to. Not every course will take you directly to your goal.” via=”no”]
That life force comes into you when you have that moment. It’s truly infusing you with life. It’s incredible.
I had ten days of deep ascension flu. I was going on a massive purge and I didn’t know what it was. I thought it was dengue fever. It’s only as things get revealed as you go along that you realize this is going on. I only had booked for four weeks and I went to another Reiki healer. He was also a hypnotherapist. I had this aching pain in my lower chakras like my womb area. It was because I’d been raped so many times by this guy and beyond. There was a lot of stuff.
Prior to that, I was guided to read about trauma bonding. Suddenly, all of this knowledge became clear and I was like, “This is what’s happening. I’m repeating all of these patterns. I can change it,” and I was driven. When I was in Thailand for four weeks, I began deep shadow work. I went to a tantra workshop thinking, “This might be a good idea.” It wasn’t a good idea. I thought this might help me. I got there and I was absorbing everything that was going on. I felt uncomfortable. However, they mentioned shadow work. That took me on a rabbit hole and I started to do my own shadow work. That’s when the deep healing for myself began.
I told this healer, “I wish I could stay for four more weeks.” He said, “Why not?” I said, “I have no money.” He goes, “It’s just the belief. If you want it, you can have it.” That was a switch. A few days later, I go into the yoga place and I hear someone talking about Abraham Hicks. I was like, “Who’s that?” She was like, “She channels these beings.” I went, “Cool.” I YouTubed it and every day I started listening to Abraham Hicks.
What year was this? I’m curious.
This was January 2019. The best exact part hasn’t even been finished. I hear that, I stay another four weeks. I made it happen. I start to realize I’m a co-creator. I start to say, “I can take my power back.” I start to heal so deeply. I get back to England in February. It’s eight weeks. I thought I’m going to start this business that I’ve been wanting to start with education. Somebody say, no. I’m at my computer and I booked a flight to Costa Rica. February happened. February, March, April, May, miraculous things are happening. Money is flowing. I’m not working. I’m being flown to Barcelona flying to all these places for free. I’m doing all the Abraham Hicks work. All the affirmations.
June comes and I get this download. I’ll book a flight to Costa Rica. I google flights and it was like £300 direct, which is crazy. At this point, I’m connecting with the angels and they said, “You did the right thing.” I booked this flight for June 4th. On the day of my flight, my mom gives me the book, The Alchemist. I read the book on the plane and I’m like, “This is my life. This is what’s happening. Everything in the story is what’s happening to me.” I get to Costa Rica. I’m only meant to be there for nine days and on the eighth day, I had a dream. It’s prophetic. I dream of the crab. I wake up and I go to the beach. I see the crab. The crab stops and looks at me. I’m looking at it and I’m like, “This is the same crab.”
I have read up on the totem of the crab. I’m sure you know already.
I can’t remember what it is, but what happened after that was I watched this crab look at me, pause, then scuttle past me and go all the way up this cliff. It goes up and I start filming. I’m like, “This is powerful.” It gets to the top and it falls all the way down. I go home straight away and I wrote a story called The Crab and the Giant Obstacle and it channels. I realized I wasn’t going to go back to England. I’m now with my computer, no money, a few items of clothing and a hand luggage bag. I gave away my social housing, which was government housing. I gave away all my possessions. I said, “Get rid of everything. I’m not coming back.” I continued on the path and I traveled like that for a year. Houses miraculously appeared. I would follow signs, numbers, feathers and heart-shaped knots. That’s my zig-zag and that’s how I ended up.
Where did you land? Where were you?
I was in Costa Rica. Crazy things kept happening. I was on the Pacific side in Nosara. Another small village with healers. I met wonderful people.
Did you feel at that point the sense of belonging?
Yes, and guess what I learned much later on? My Earth chakra. I was doing service work. My Earth chakra was doing grid work for the crystalline grid of the planet because it was taking me to all these places miraculously with no logical way of getting there.
I would like to read about the crab, “A crab’s spiritual totem may skitter across your path at some point, maybe in places that you wouldn’t expect. If it does, it is acting to remind you that not all paths lead where you want them to. Not every course will take you directly to your goal.” I would like to see it because we’re talking zig-zag and that’s how it’s going. It’s a water element. I’m trying to find the gist of it. It symbolizes the point of rebirth in your life cycle.
It was and in 2019, I realized I was on my nine years cycle because prior to that, in 2009, that’s when I ended my old one and became a teacher in the academic.
It says, “Out with the old and in with the new by dumping excess emotional baggage.”
[bctt tweet=”Every little thing in life sometimes could get a little heady. It’s important to live your life without analyzing it all.” via=”no”]
Yes, that was it. When this has finished, you got to check out the story that I wrote because that’s powerful.
I am finding this to be so cool because it always is so fitting, but the crab is self-sufficient, intuitive, tenacious and perseverant.
I used the word to tenacity in the story. I’ve got another beautiful thing about the spirit animals that kept coming to me like the cockroach. I was living in a jungle and there was this one cockroach that would come out every night. You know cockroaches move fast. Very slowly, it would look at me and instead of being scared, I would look at it. I had another dream with cockroaches everywhere. I thought, “I need to check out the spirit world.” It was on the third time when I woke up and I stood on one and it didn’t die. It was wishy and I was like, “I need to investigate.” It was about surviving and going against all odds, but you can look it up. Guess what happened though? It went. As soon as I looked up the meaning, I never saw it again until I was in Malaysia. It came back to me in Malaysia and I knew immediately that all is well.
This is the thing. There are always messages. Everything is sacred. Many people do not understand how much communication is going on right in front of them. To analyze every little thing in life sometimes could get a little heavy. It’s important to live your life without analyzing it all. When it shows up and you know, you get the hint that there’s a message coming through. It’s so beautiful.
Costa Rica was bloody amazing. Snakes but it took me all the way through when I was in Thailand. I saw a king cobra. No one sees that. It was right there in front of me just looking at me.
When I started teaching Reiki and a lot of energy healing, I had a truly amazing dream. You know when the dreams are so lucid. It was the shedding of the old and that feels so soulful. When you feel that, you need that skin to come off. You need the visual.
Yes, and I’ve got so much with the snakes and dreams that I can likely count.
Jess, I love the zig-zag story touched you and you can relate so strongly to it. As your path goes, we’re always zig-zagging. We may go up or go down but it is a movement. It is leading with your intuition, not always your mind. I would love to hear your work. I know it is the Mindset Alchemy. I would love to hear in your words how you fell into this work and also the heart of it. I would love to sit back and listen to your philosophy.
Mindset Alchemy is built on the idea that if we go within, we can connect with our inner master. With that inner master, that strong higher self-connection, and that knowledge of ourselves, we can follow the soul’s calling and live a beautiful life. A soul-led life of divine creativity and highest purpose. It also helps people to reclaim personal power and through knowing themselves, to shed skin and to shed what doesn’t belong to them.
To take away the false and the limiting beliefs, the concepts of the world, the ideas and the energy that doesn’t belong to them. Once the alchemy on its own is an energy clearing method that was rooted in ancient Hawaiian practice, but I’m drawing on many modalities to create this one thing. I use Ho’oponopono in its original form. I was trained by a woman who was trained by someone trained by Morrnah Simeona, the actual originator of modern Ho’oponopono. It’s not what people think and not the four-word mantra.
I’m happy that we’re getting to the heart of this prayer because a lot of times, information gets passed along and everyone says certain prayers. Some people may think it’s a little hokey and woo-woo. I want to get to the truth of it. I heard that urban tale. Is there a true story where Hew Len use the Ho’oponopono prayer, the Hawaiian prayer? Did he sit through all the files in a psychiatric ward and process each person and say the prayer to transform the energy?
That’s what he says. I can’t dispute that. What I know is that this is a completely different tool. I have the original manual written by Morrnah who bought this work. The prayer is a very powerful prayer in many different steps. In order to do it, you have to do a ceremony that chins in your subconscious mind first and changes the structures so that when you program this prayer with specific wording or keywords, then it connects from the conscious to the subconscious, taking it to the divine mind, the superconscious and it takes it to the divine. The divine then takes that message and does the clearing on your mind.
She was a Kahuna from the age of four. They have a very vast, old, ancient and mystical tradition of powerful stuff that I don’t even know half of. Whether he did that or not, and I believe it because I know how powerful Ho’oponopono is in its core because I know this version. I know what they do. I would love to give you a session to show you how it works.
I would be so honored and I would love a session.
What this does is it goes straight into the subconscious mind and plucks out whatever it is we ask. If you have a subconscious belief that you have a fear of dogs, we can go in and clear the fear of dogs. If you believe that you’re worthless, we can take that program out straight away using this process. What Mindset Alchemy is an amalgamation of that and all of my other knowledge. I use the emotion code where I learned about muscle testing. I’ve come up with a method to speak to the subconscious so we can get and clear what we want and diagnose what we need to clear.
I was a specialist in metacognition and reading. I came up with my own pedagogy to teach children how to make implicit thinking skills explicit in their process. I’ve applied that to Mindset Alchemy. I’m in the process of creating books that teach people how to become their own healers. You don’t need to come to me. You can have a method that can connect with your subconscious using the universal laws, using the clues and tuning in to be able to identify what you need to clear in your own life.
[bctt tweet=”In every lifetime, everything that has happened is stored.” via=”no”]
I believe very strongly in muscle testing. The work that I have been concentrating on is working with the Akashic field and bringing in muscle testing. Often, the people that I work with are not even aware of our core beliefs. We are not even aware of our core fear. The word itself isn’t necessarily coming to the tip of our tongue. When you work with muscle testing, you come up with the word and it’s always accurate, then you get to the heart of it. Information is coming from another place. It’s coming from a higher realm and we have to access that. I do believe in every lifetime, everything that has happened is stored and it is that field. Edgar Cayce was one of the most unbelievable renowned people that was able to access this and time is not what we think it is. Time is not linear. Access the information to clear our future.
I can’t wait to give you a session because anything I clear, I clear across all time, space, dimensions and realities. We can clear all of the multiple levels.
We are multidimensional. There’s a wonderful book because I had done a lot of past life regression and that’s a beautiful thing, but I always stress. We don’t want to go back to start pulling out old stories. We want to be in the here and now, and by accessing a feeling or energy, that’s how we’re clearing it. There is a beautiful book. The name is The Oversoul Seven. It’s a cool idea because it helps us understand. We have this big soul and we have all these different experiences. It’s like parallel lives and parallel levels of consciousness. We’re living all these different stories but when one part heals, we all heal. It’s not saying, “Go back,” It’s this one line. It’s very cool.
I bring in neuroscience as well. I’d bring in aspects of NLP and timelining. I love the mind. I’ve always been obsessed with the mind. When I was teaching, I would be obsessed with long-term and short-term memory. I would create teaching in a way that would focus on the best way to use the mind. That’s been a thread throughout all of my work.
I want to pull something in because academically, I was never the top student. I always felt that my gifts were more of an intuitive part of me. I had a knowing but the details of everything that was more intellectual. I couldn’t quite remember everything all the time, which I found to be very interesting. As I got older, I dropped feeling ashamed about that. I can remember the most obscure things. It’s what interests you, what’s in your mind but the idea that all the information is not coming from our brain. It’s coming from another place of consciousness. That’s often what I feel. It’s like telepathy with people. When information is streaming in, if we are open to receive, it’s like the tower is open, so you can learn a new language if you’re open to it simultaneously.
Once I’ve stepped into my own intuition and started tuning into the right-side brain, I was realizing that this is all divine inspiration. In my podcast, we’re talking about this next session because one of my clients, Lisa, found that when I trained her in this and she started clearing. She was screaming because she was suddenly connected. She was no longer blocked by stuff.
You and I do very similar work because it truly is the clearing. We’re talking about the different totems like the snake or any of this. For many indigenous, this was a part of their culture. I have spoken about this often. I did some work with the Peruvians, the Caral tribe and they have wonderful meditation. You could call it a prayer or meditation and it’s bringing in the light, clearing up the heavy energy, putting it into the Earth. It’s that cycle, that movement, and many different cultures and ideas. We all have a similar method to clear it. It could be that same rhythm or that same cycle coming from above, bringing the light in, taking it into the earth then back up again. What I love to learn about is it’s not good and bad. We always say, “Those toxic people” or “That is negative for me.” In their mindset, it’s not good and bad. It’s heavy and light. Heavy is not bad. Heavy is heavy. We have to clear it out.
That completely resonates with me. That was a realization that came to me on the journey. I was like, “There is no good or bad.”
That doesn’t make you feel bad about yourself or guilty that you had experiences that were traumatic. We have these horrible experiences and we could feel bad about ourselves like, “How did I let this happen to me?” It takes you out of that mindset because you’re like, “My soul needed this experience. It’s heavy stuff. Let’s clear it.”
That was it. When I realized that earth was a school and my soul was having growth lessons and I chose it. I would go to the level of, “I chose that for my soul’s growth.”
When we all wake up and we have these epiphanies, there is no victimhood anymore. It is truly you created this for your life so you are the programmer of your own life. Sometimes we need to reprogram. We’re like, “This is malfunctioning. I want to shift it.” All you’re doing is helping people reprogram.
It’s to come back into this soul power. Also, teaching them all of the tools to connect with their intuition. I have a Meditation Mastery membership, which is like a foundation course in using cosmic energy, but it’s a mastery approach. It’s a very powerful course of creating and destroying. There are all these techniques to play energy, to get people on the foundation so they can start clearing. They can train in the Mindset Alchemy on top. They’re building up their toolbox.
I know we discussed this before and you did speak to a hypnotherapist. There’s so much truth in everything, just like every religion has so much truth. We’re evolving. It’s not like this one method is the best. That’s why as practitioners, a lot of people are blending all of what they’ve learned. There’s so much. For the work that I did with hypnosis, I found that I felt the pressure to relax people. A lot of very productive people or very active people felt they couldn’t relax. That was more of their fear. It’s very difficult for them to let go and feel they had to be in this trance-like state.
What I love about the Akashic stuff and a lot of things that you’re doing, we don’t need to be asleep in order to shift our mindset. You don’t have to fall asleep and you don’t have to get so deep. That also goes from meditation because a lot of people say, “I don’t know how to meditate. I find it difficult. I can’t get there. I’m scared to go so far away.” We don’t have to leave our bodies. Is there anything you want to contribute to the thought?
We don’t need to leave the body to be present. Once we’re in the body, as the divine consciousness, we can operate in full power. When we bring our divine aspect into the body and we are present, we can notice what’s going on. We can release happiness and stored energy, be grounded and be present and create.
Be in the body first because in order for us as humans to understand how to get rid of the stuff that we don’t want, we don’t have to leave. We do not need to go to the far ends of the Earth as you traveled so much, which is a beautiful thing. We can stay in our homes, especially as the world is in such a different place. We don’t have to go on these faraway retreats to have these life-changing experiences. We can connect the way we are in this way, but we can be here right here, right now where you are, even with the distractions. Many people have distractions in the background. Give yourself an allotted amount of time to bring yourself in, and then it can start working faster.
[bctt tweet=”All the information is not actually coming from our brain; it’s coming from another place of consciousness.” via=”no”]
I completely subscribed to that and that’s exactly why I teach. I have three programs. I’ve got the meditation mastery, which I want everybody to do because it’s the foundations of becoming present and becoming connected with the body, which is our biggest teacher so that we can help to release what doesn’t serve us and manage the auric field. You start getting very present, bringing your auric close to you, closing up your chakras, and being aware of yourself.
I want to hear that again because that’s a beautiful thing. How often do we say, “Open up?” However, when we do that for energy workers and for those that want to feel good, sometimes if you’re wide open, that’s why certain times I can’t wear certain crystals. You can’t always be so open. We have to learn how to bring the energy in a very protected way. That’s very important.
In some ways, I say, “This course will help you to manage and manipulate energy.” It’s helping you to become very conscious, awake and aware of how your managing energy for yourself and others. When you go into a supermarket or to a lift and your aura is all over the place, you’re blending in with everybody else. When you consciously bring your aura close to you, you’re able to be contained. You’re able to then operate as your own energy and create without that dissonance or disturbance.
That’s a lifesaver for a lot of people. Those people also could have social anxiety, they may feel very exposed. I always loved to bring myself up, going from the belly button up to the lip, then from the back, up. There are so many different ways to do it, but I enjoy that thought. I think that’s something that everyone needs to hear.
I was thinking about that before with the nervous system. When I had the awakening in 2019, I came off the stimulants. I came off everything. I even came off the contraceptive pill, which I’ve been on practically all my life. I started having periods again and it was fantastic. I’d been on the pill since I started my period.
In the Reiki circles that I did after I had my second kid, I went on the pill for a good amount of time. I remember all of the people in my Reiki circle. They’re like, “You need to be in the flow. You need to have your cycles.” That was one reason why I also went off of it because it was important to be in touch with yourself, just as we’re saying, being in touch with your body. Whatever is taking you away from yourself, it is important to check-in. That’s very important.
It was the breath that is calming down our nervous system, whether it’s with meditation or not drinking coffee or having one coffee a day rather than four or breathing consciously. We were talking before about people that don’t want to let go. You don’t have to go to sleep or go into an altered state of consciousness. All we need to do is take some deep conscious breaths and relax our nervous system to come back in.
Breathing is one of the most incredible practices. I went to a beautiful intensive class with Dan Brulé. He trained the Navy SEALs. He also trains Tony Robbins. He has been influential with many people. He’s in his 70s now but he learned so many different methods. He met everyone, Wim Hof, Leonard Orr, the rebirthing technique. When I was in training, what was so incredible was what he called the Spiritual Breath and he has written a book about it so we could all access this knowledge.
What is so beautiful is if you’re doing this breathing, it was in and out of the mouth. We were laying down and the music was very beautiful. It was very uplifting music. Not quite music to put you to sleep. It was more to awaken you and I’ve never felt so ecstatic. We were in this breathing experience for a good hour, in and out that consecutive breath. Some people were crying. Some people were laughing, but they were able to release. It was truly the most transforming experience I’ve ever had. Even though I’ve had so many beautiful spiritual experiences, that was incredible. Some people think it takes work to breathe. Any words of wisdom to talk about how to practice breathing?
I don’t have any words of wisdom about it.
Instead of it being work because a lot of people I know say, “It’s so much work to spend five minutes doing conscious breathing.”
I would say try it. That’s the best I’ve got.
After you think it’s heavy to breathe in and out and be consciously breathing, it’s important to relax.
I would look at the reasons behind why they didn’t work. Sometimes when people are busy, that is just the trauma response in there. Rather than trying to say that it’s not working or here’s a solution, I would say let’s explore the underlying fear or the belief that’s blocking you from wanting to be present in the body and be still for a minute because that’s probably what it is.
Jess, you are such a pleasure. There is so much more I would love to discuss with you and learn and share. This was such a gift to talk to you. Thank you so much. Anything you would like to close up with, the floor is yours. I would love to hear it.
I would love to invite any of the audience who are resonating with my practices or would love to know more to connect with me and to join my group. I have a Facebook community called Mindset Alchemy: The Community for Conscious Creators. It’s a free container where I produce high-quality resources, where I run masterclasses. I want to build a powerful community for people to become conscious, awake and aware. To join that, I have a Meditation Mastery membership program which is online. Come and join the community and you can find out everything.
Your energy is so great. I’m part of the community. There’s so much that you offer and give. It’s nice to be part of the feeling of all the women and men, I’m sure that comes. Thank you for offering this wonderful group. It’s so good to connect. You are the best. Enjoy the rest of your day.
Thank you so much for having me. It’s been such a pleasure. I love you.
Important Links
- Jess Shillingford
- Mindset Alchemy: The Community for Conscious Creators
- The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People
- The Alchemist
- The Oversoul Seven
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